A semicolon for Claire

 When my oldest daughter Claire was a newborn she woke up at 6am.  I would feed her and then make tea and in the quiet hours of dark fall mornings I would sip my caffienated tea and play music, holding her close, and we would dance.  I was tired, a new mom, but ever so grateful for the priveledge to hold and nurse and love this beautiful baby girl that I had longed for and prayed for and dreamed about.  When she got older we went for walks and I would tell her to listen....listen to the birds and the traffic on the highway where we lived, to the sounds of nature and to the world around her...and Claire learned to listen.  She could sing the words to songs before she could walk.  She became one who would hear and know and love music and rhythm and movement in a pure way.....and when she turned four years old we signed her up for dance classes.  A size xs black leo, some baggy xs pink tights and some super cute tiny ballet flats and off she went to her first pre-ballet class in the basement of the local ballet studio.  

Claire fell in love with her ballet teacher.  Everything Ms. Robin said was truth and gold.  She went to class every week until her baby brother was born and about that same time we started trying on the costume for recital and 4 year old Claire freaked out.  She really just wanted to go to Ms. Robin's basement and dance with her friends in the safe place with rules and smiles....she didn't want to wear the costume and go up on the big scary stage and leave her baby brother Jeremiah who was just born or her mom or dad or little brother Isaac....and so when I tried to bring her to class each week she cried and kicked and screamed and refused to get out of the car.  

I called Ms. Robin and said.....I'm so sorry.  My child refuses to dance in the recital.  She misunderstood.  She thought she only would dance for you and with her friends.  Ms. Robin said, that's ok.  If she wants to try again next year she is always welcome.  We took a year or two off....went to a recital, did some tumbling classes, started kindergarten and Claire decided to try dance again.  That year she did the recital.  After the recital she asked us, "next year can I do more classes?"  Year after year, it was the same thing....she got nervous for recital and she hated the costumes and after the recital she asked again "next year can I do more classes?"  Claire loved to dance.  

She turned 11 and wanted to join the company dancers who paid for extra classes and costumes and did competitions not because she was comptetitive but because Claire loved to dance.  We said yes but she had to help pay for the extra cost because dance is expensive.  Claire began to babysit and started to dance more....and Claire became a dancer.  She did volleyball and she played in band and orchestra but above all else she loved to dance.  Dance taught her so many lessons about life and people and there were many tears and tantrums, lots of fighting, lots of tension and for me, lots of tossing and turning about how we were going to pay for the dance bills...

She went to high school and joined the dance team.  She taught dance at the studio to help pay for her classes.  She became a leader and a teacher.  Her dance family became her support system and her safety net when her friends at school betrayed her and the world let her down....her dance world blended into her identity and her spine straightened a bit and her chin lifted and she stood taller and she grew into a knowledge of who she was as a human as well as a dancer.  She listened even more closely to the music and understood even more deeply what it all meant and in the season that many young girls wonder who they are, Claire knew.  

She went to college and danced on the college dance team which is hard and gruelling and does not get the accolades of other college sports even though it is just as exhausting if not more so.  She has weathered injury, illness, relationship drama, leadersip challenges, good-byes of close friends, and long, long days juggling school work, a job, practices, workouts and a new marriage.....She will graduate from college in May and will have danced competitively for all 4 years of college. 

Tomorrow is Claire's last dance performance.  The team travels to Nebraska for one more competition.  We have followed her on this journey for 16 years and we are going to Nebraska for this last one so that we can finish with her.  I'm not sad, really, but I've been crying a lot, remembering all of it because this is the place for that.  This is the pause where you look back at all of the story of it and you take a huge deep breath and then you go to this last competition and you watch her do what she loves one more time. You marvel at how beautiful she is and how much her smile fills the room and how hard it is to watch anyone but her when she is dancing because she just hears the music and she is  dancing and not performing and not competing....but simply loving the priveledge of moving to the music.  

On the other side of the semicolon comes everything else for Claire.