The Trick to Feeling Young

Just be Gramma. I repeated my mantra as I hustled my boys into the car the night of the recital. I kept my costume hidden under a long chenille bathrobe. I didn’t let my boys watch me sew in the late night hours, didn’t give them an inch, a leg warmer, a reason to bail out my recital. I handed the camcorder to my older son, and laid down the law.

“Okay, boys. You’re my ‘parents’ for the recital. I’m just warning you—everyone in my class is a lot younger, and their parents will be there. I don’t know if people are going to laugh at me, so you’re gonna hafta clap extra loud, okay? I worked hard on this routine.”

I glanced at my boys in the rear-view mirror. They looked worried. Ten cleared his throat.

“Uh, mom? Tell us again why you’re doing this?”

His brother poked him in the side and whispered sotto voce. “Duh! She did it to lose weight. Haven’t you noticed she’s not as fat?”

The boys raced to the risers and jockeyed for position in the front row along with a handful of moms, dads, sisters, and boyfriends. I stood in the corner of the room with my fellow students. Pixie pulled us together.

“We’re going to do this by age. Youngest to oldest. While you’re waiting for your turn, you can sit in the dressing room and work on your makeup. I have some bottled water in there. Stay hydrated! Don’t be nervous!”

Easy for her to say. I slapped my purse on the dressing room table and got to work. The other girls wore store-bought dance costumes—brightly colored spun sugar fragments that flew around their nubile bodies. They wore their hair in dancer’s buns, in a sheet of iron-flattened veil. They applied eyeliner, mascara, added tiny sparkles of gold glitter above their eyes. They looked like small town Broadway, an echo of New York separated by prairie grass, by experience. I kept my bathrobe tightly tied around my waist.

“C’mon Ms. Birdie. Show us your costume! Did you get it at Sara Dee’s?”

Blondie referenced the local dance outfitter. I shook my head no and smiled. One after another, my three compadres filed into the hall. I heard Fergie rap and yowl, Kanye grunt and gripe, heard Beyonce rock the rafters with a power ballad. My heart matched the music in fear, beat much faster than it should. I stared at my face in the mirror, at the woman twice as old as the other dancers, at the mother, the woman with crow’s feet around her green eyes, at the woman who knew only how to wrap children in love. She looked back at me and winked.

It’s been a while since that recital.