Mom?

Last night I had a dentist appointment. I love my dentist. I have been going to the same one since I was 10. So when I moved to the city I had to look for a new one... yah I don't think so. I make the commute back to the burbs every single time just for my dentist. My mom was nice enough to pick me up from the train and take me there and then we went out to dinner. She had the salmon salad I had chick parmesan mmmm.... yummy!

There we were, dipping bread in olive oil and having glasses of merlot while my mom talked about her trip to California to visit my brother. Later on, the subject of my ballet classes came up. For anyone who doesn't know my mom was HUGE into ballet. She started when she was 10 and took until she was 18, went to college and taught classes there and then took more until after my littlest brother (not so little any more) was born. Let's see, so that would mean she stopped in '89. This story, coming from her, is accompanied by many tales of her riding the El at 10 "Can you BELIEVE my parents let me do that! They don't care about anybody but themselves. But I was fine." Going on to high school: "My friend Kim and I would spend hours stretching each other's arches." Then finally: "the doctor said I was ruining my feet and if I kept on doing what I was doing I'd wind up in a wheelchair." I always wondered how she danced for that long because she has the same bazooms that I do! Ouch! And this in the age before exercise bras.

Usually my mom goes on to talk about my cousin Kathleen and how she was an amazing dancer, "She would stand away from the bar, put her leg up behind her in arabesque with her nose down to her knee, then, with her leg up behind her she'd pull her body straight up! I saw her partners class and she was the best one in the room." Kathleen now has her yoga certification, which is no surprise. My mom says Kathleen and I have the same legs, we're both hyper-extended. She insists I would have been a good dancer if I had kept up with it when I was little. The difference apparently being that Kathleen did NOT get stung by a bee in the parking lot of HER dance studio and thus refuse to return to class.

I've got to give my mom credit, with all her obsession over dancing she didn't push me into it. In fact, she never really forced me into any of those hobbies. There was ballet, figure skating (which I quit when I found out I'd be forced to compete if I wanted to move up classes), horse back riding (I decided was too cold in the winter), and I settled on violin (because my best friend in first grade was taking lessons) and tennis (because Bryan and my dad started taking lessons).

Anyway, so there sat me and my mom in the car, driving back to the city and I found myself saying, "no really, you should come just for one class, it could be fun!"

"Oh I don't know... do you think I could just for one?"

"I'll ask my teacher if that'd be okay, it's only 50 min. and you could stay for the advanced class. But I warn you, our class, everybody's awful. And there's a man in a thong and tights. Just a warning."

"Don't you think I've seen that?"

"Sure, but he's OLD... like 50 in a thong and tights, it's a little disturbing."

"Oh I don't care."

So stay tuned... next week... it could be me and my mom... together... in leotards. SCARY!!! Why is the vision of my mom in tights doing pirouettes funny?

How to describe my mother... Yes, she was big into ballet. But she is in no way a pink tights, tutu girl. In addition to ballet my mom's other big obsession is hockey. Yes HOCKEY. When Miracle came out she'd get all teary describing USA's win over Russia. Then she'd launch into the accuracies/inaccuracies of the film's depiction of the games (which she says she has all on tape somewhere). Inevitably she'd settle on the last game where Russia never pulled their goalie, which in the film they say it's because the coach doesn't know what to do because he's never been in that position before. My mom insists it's because he's cocky, his team is a winner and it would show weakness to pull the goalie.

My mom's love of the game is definitely old school. She doesn't memorize stats or players, she takes it all in. She doesn't follow the puck along, she sees the whole ice. When the Blackhawks scoreboard starts to show pictures of their most favored players she rattles them off, but ask her who's number 19 on the team today, she has no idea. When the Stanley Cup comes around, she always roots for the underdog, hence her endless battle to get the Blackhawks to the finals. After a couple of glasses of wine, "My dream... is to watch the Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup finals with my dad."

My mom coached for Purdue when she went there for college making her the first woman to coach collegiate hockey. She was written up in the Blue Line. First, the magazine had another woman in there, and went on to say she wrote all of these books about hockey and yadda yadda... I think my dad contacted them to tell them they made a mistake. So they wrote a retraction and listed my mom as the first, which was funny because she went on to coach two pee wee teams and then enjoyed the game from the audience.

She's been hit by the puck twice. Once in the head when she was coaching and was nine months pregnant with me (no comments please). The other time she was in her seat, and pregnant with one of my brothers. My mom is tough, driven, disciplined.

The vision of my mom, in tights and leotard, and ME doing plies, frankly, makes me laugh.