I have just returned from my daughters school dance concert….
If you are a parent this may bring moans of oh, no, how many of them have I sat through. Well I have sat through a lot. My girls did ballet from when they were in kindy; those were the concerts that you sat through for a couple of hours to see your daughter on stage for about, oh, let me think… 30 seconds!
They were also the concerts that afterwards I would also say to the girls “Why do you walk around on tippy toes, why don’t they just get taller girls!”… which was always greeted by moans that you can only hear the tone of after doing a really good ‘Dad Joke’ for the 400th time.
These where the concerts that made the thought of drip torture as a viable alternative. I do recall that I used to go to the pub before I went, which made them a little better, but unfortunately made me a bad parent.
I also could not tolerate the self important photographer who made it as difficult as possible to order photographs of the girls before the concert. He had devised a system that required not only an ordering area insufficient for one parent, let alone the 200 that were trying to order, but was time consuming, questionably reliable (I often chased for weeks after the actual photographs I had ordered of my girls as opposed to the photographs of what appeared to be random members of the ballet school which had been sent to me!) and involved you doing everything so he could reject your initial form due to error which the form had been designed to create. I would go through this process each year (for about 10 years I might add) as my Mum cherished the photographs dearly… and in addition each year I would ask the photographer to lend me his ‘good pen’ and always fail to return it. Sometimes it is the little things!
Well tonight, and fortunately over the last couple of years, the girls have gotten older and thankfully much better.
But, lets face it, it was never about the dancing. It was about the parenting and the moment. Before my Mum went to the nursing home I used to take her to the concerts. It was a moment where we wondered at these little people that came from us.
It was a moment to be proud. Tonight I wasn’t just proud, I was grateful; grateful that I had all those previous concerts and all the concerts to come. Grateful that, just maybe, over the years the girls have become better dancers and I have grown with them and become a better parent.