the daydreamer and her mom

I nicked this from my ballet memoirs. Enjoy

Imagine me as a little girl. If you're seeing this tiny, muscular little ball of fluff, think again. Take that image of me and stretch my legs and arms out so that I kinda resemble a daddy longlegs (which is what I've been called from time to time). Give me boy hair and big eyes. Yep, that's more like it.

When I was a child, I actually had extremely long legs and arms and torso and I was super thin, no matter what I ate. I could eat an entire six-pack of those Hershey white chocolate bars (I've forgotten what they're called; they don't make them now but I think I must have been keeping them in business for quite a while) in one sitting and not gain weight.

Even if my lankiness was akin to gangliness, my mom always said that I would grow up to be either a supermodel or a ballerina. A supermodel, because, well, she was one. That's how my parents met. Dad had stopped dancing and was this highly sought-after fashion show director while mom was a model.

So I was taking ballet class because I so looked the part. Even if I was the most horrible kid in ballet class, even when my mom was finally fed up with me, my Dad would see me through to the end. Yes, I was taking ballet class with my dad in our school because I was going to grow up to be a ballerina and I was going to be one of the best. And I rebelled.

Oh, I don't know why I rebel; looking back, I have to admit that I just rebel just because. They say so and I do the opposite. My mom would find me scratching my legs hard enough to prick the skin and create wounds and she would holler, "How are you going to win Miss Universe if you scratch your legs up like that?" And I would holler back, "Well, I don't want to be Miss Universe anyway!" Just so that I can be left scratching in peace.

So I was not a child prodigy. I was not spectacular, or anywhere near great even. I would have a few great days, I remember, and that would surprise everyone. My thoroughly great days are recital days; Mom says I was always so "Wow!" during performances onstage. I vividly remember my first recital in Meralco Theatre. Cinderella was my favorite movie and my favorite ballet that year and my Dad staged a short version of Cinderella for me - I was cast as one of Cinderella's friend birds but I was so involved in the entire thing: I watched all rehearsals as if I were running the rehearsals and thoroughly enjoyed every minute just watching the dance being created. My dad had put together a small junior company of sorts by then, and they danced most of Cinderella while there was a divertissement "dream sequence" for us little girls to the music from the Disney cartoon ("Cinderelly Cinderelly!"). That was a lot of fun even if I FORGOT my bird headdress at home on the day of the recital.

But in class, I was always daydreaming. I daydreamed I was somewhere else, daydreamed I would create fantastic houseboats or airplanes or space stations where I could live far away from the tedium of school and merciless school bullies, the tedium of ballet class, and the tedium of the real world in general.

I daydreamed so much that I almost missed my childhood. Or maybe I actually would have, if I didn't have ballet to prove that my childhood existed.

My dad would get so mad at me when I was caught daydreaming. And it wasn't the normal, I get caught, I get punished and that's over with. No, my dad would sit me down and we would discuss why I would rather daydream than pay attention in ballet class. And no answer made him happy. It lasted hours. To avoid these long discussions, I was forced to pay attention in class. So I ended up learning a thing or two. But I wasn't great. I was okay. And I only did what I did to get my dad off my back.

Sometimes, though, I have to admit, I would daydream that I was more than great. I dreamed I was a prima ballerina and audiences were giving me a million curtain calls. As I've mentioned, I was always great during performances. I loved shows. I hated ballet class, but I loved the shows. I also loved watching the shows. I would dream that my life was made up of dancing in theatres with all the lights on and the audience applauding every night. And whenever it was pointed out to me that I needed ballet class in order to do that, I would lose interest in ballet again. Imagine wanting to be a butterfly without going through the icky caterpillar-chrysalis thingie first.

My mom, who could have lived her life as a professional model or concert pianist or secretary or whatever, had gotten married at the age of 20 because she had gotten herself pregnant with little old me. She is a lot of things, but first and foremost, to this very day in an endearingly irritating way, she is a mother, and more distinctly, she is our mom. She rejoices with every little thing my siblings and I do and despairs over our little (or huge) tragedies. She dreamed her dream for me, not because it was a dream she couldn't fulfill for herself but because she knew me more than anybody else in the world and knew what I did not - that her dream for me was really my dream also.

Mom said that when I was little, even after I had started taking ballet class and had become monumentally bored with it, I would sit at the edge of my seat whenever any dancing was being shown. Whether we were at home in front of the TV, in the studio watching rehearsals, or in a theatre watching a show, I was always sitting at the edge of my seat, my eyes as huge as saucers and my smile plastered on my face like a mask. And then, for hours after, I would be dancing and dancing and dancing by myself, whirling around and around like a music box someone forgot to close shut.

My mom is never one to sneer at me and say "I told you so," and she didn't do that when I decided I wanted to dance after high school and even several years later when I quit my corporate job to dance full-time (actually, she was appalled when I did that). But there are times when she'd pinch my legs and say, "And you were so difficult growing up! Rebelde kasi! Rebelde!!!" Which I appreciate more than if she had said, "I told you so!"

This entry is dedicated to my mom. I love her.