Opening Night

A Dozen Pink roses are filling the vase in the middle of the table. My daughter lies sleeping in my bed, tired out and dreaming of the laughter and the applause of the audience.

Her face still has traces of make up under her hairline. She was too tired do a good washing before she collapsed to sleep.

Opening Night has come and gone. The jitters, the exhaustion tears, and the fears are all over. The worry that she will miss a line, miss a dance step. It is all passed and she never missed a beat.

As I sat in the audience, I knew at each step that she had completed one more hurdle. I held my breath as she easily performed the dance steps she had so worried about. When it was her turn for a line, my chest fluttered.

My husband sat clutching my hand. I could feel his squeeze as he looked up onto the stage and saw his little girl. Tears filled my eyes at one point when he whispered in my ear "Wasn't she just born yesterday?"

My mind wandered to the time when I had first learned I was pregnant with my daughter. I had been teaching a class to my special needs high school girls on Health. The lesson was mainly about the menstrual cycle and how to chart it. We were a class of 6 girls and I had given the girls calendars and we had begun charting our cycles. I was charting mine along with them to help them to understand the importance of doing this.

At the beginning of each class we took out our private calendars and we charted away. As the girls color coded their squares I was color coding mine. One of the girls looked over my shoulder and said "Mrs. P, how come there is no pink on your calendar?"

I had not even noticed until that moment that my own calendar was missing a menstrual cycle. I was so excited that this girl had finally figured out that a menstrual period happened once a month that I ignored my calendar and gave her a big hug for understanding the concepts!

My mind came back to reality, and I saw my daughter dancing in her black leotard and sitting next to me watching was the little girl, now 26 who had told me I had missed a period! I am sure she doesn't remember or realize the significance of that calendar but I still have it and it is in my daughter's baby book.

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