June’s Indian dance performance was yesterday. I almost didn’t make it because there was a repairperson fixing our freezer, which had been leaking and causing water to drip through the basement ceiling and it wasn’t clear whether he would finish in time for me to leave the house. Noah was charging his video camera to tape the performance for me and Beth was arriving at the house in order to pick us up and take us to June’s school when he wrapped up and left. He actually crossed paths with Beth in the driveway.
It was that kind of week. The other main stressor was that June’s camp for the first week of summer break—a yoga camp she attended last year and liked and that was walking distance from the house and took place during a week when Noah would be out of town thus affording me a rare week with both kids occupied—that camp was cancelled at the last minute because the instructor had a family crisis. So I spent hours over the course of several days on the computer and on the phone scrambling to get June into another camp at the last minute. But I finally did and the freezer was fixed in time for me to go to her dance performance and it cost less than a new roof (the other possible explanation for the dripping water), so it all ended well.
Noah didn’t have much homework (or so we thought at the time) so he came, too. The performance was in the multi-purpose room, which is a combination cafeteria/auditorium. It was actually pressed into service as both that afternoon as the kids who attend the school’s after care were there to eat their snack of carrots and hummus and to watch the performance, alongside the parents and siblings of the children in the dance class.
On the registration form I filled out for Indian dance early in the spring it noted in all caps that it was a CO-ED class for BOYS and GIRLS, but apparently the use of capital letters was not sufficient to attract any boys to the class. There were about ten or twelve girls standing on the stage in borrowed costumes when the show began. (Before it began, they were peeking their heads out under the bottom of the curtain.) June had described her costume to us in detail the week before. It was a purple sleeveless top with blue straps and loose blue pants with a flower and vine motif. She loved it. June’s hair was braided (she told me later a girl in the class had done it for her) and she even had a bindi on her forehead. The dancing itself lasted about five minutes, maybe less. June was in the front row and her best friend Megan was in the back, but I could see Megan’s brilliant smile from all the way back there. June looked more serious, but like everyone, she seemed to be having a good time.
Afterward the group posed for pictures in their practice room, parents and siblings left so the girls could change and as she dismissed them, the teacher handed out cookies and lollipops as rewards for good behavior during the eight-week session. There was a great deal of speculation about which dancers would get a treat, but in the end, they all did.
School ends tomorrow with a half day. We bid a fond farewell to second grade, a somewhat less fond one to seventh grade, and the kids and Beth will embark on a camping trip during which they will meet Beth’s mom and hand off Noah to her, for a week of grandmotherly spoiling. While they are all gone I will enjoy a couple days of quiet and solitude, the calm before the storms of summer.