Ode to Dad

I was eleven years old when I attended the second audition of what was to be too many to count.  I attended a small ballet company on the east-side of Columbus, the second of the three ballet schools of my youth, and in my opinion, the best in the city.  The audition was for membership in "The Company" which performed publicly and at schools around the city.  I had not made the cut the year before, but now, at eleven, I had so much more going for me...!  By the time I was eleven, I was probably in dance class four or five nights out of the week.  Both of my sisters danced.  My mom took classes, and also, for a period of time, taught movement classes for very small children.  Someone in our family was at dance class at Alan Miles Ballet Academy on almost any given night between 1983 and 1987.

My father did not take ballet classes.

It must have been somewhat mystifying to him, and it was an odd picture to even spy him, or any dad, inside the academy walls, a small establishment with two dance studios and in need of some refurbishment.  My dad was an engineer his whole adult working life.  He worked at the same place during that entire career.  In the same building.  The company itself changed, grew, was bought by a bigger company, and then a bigger one, and had four names during his employment, but for him, the drive down East Broad Street never changed.  Nor the hours.  Nor the Business Casual that became his standard wear and that which appeared in stark contrast to the dozens of flitting pairs of pink tights at the Alan Miles Ballet Academy when he would occasionally have to pick one of us up.  Not infrequently in the 80s and 90s did my father suggest that I (and my sisters) go into engineering as a career.  This suggestion was usually met with eye-rolling and laughter.  Get Stuffed, I'm going into the theatre!  One of his best arguments in favor of the career was that the field of engineering was woefully deficient of women and jobs were plentiful.  (Eye-roll, eye-roll, tee-hee-hee...)  If you know anything about jobs for women in the theatre, my chosen vocation, the irony here is chokeable.  (I made that word up.  See below.)

*A Note:  I did some research and almost barfed up my cereal at the statistics.  

I derailed from my own blog for about an hour, reading various articles.

 You should follow this link below and read playwright Theresa Rebeck's speech.

17% of playwrights are women

38% of stage roles are for women

35% of TV roles are for women

of the top 250 films last year only 9% were directed by women

Generally, over the last 25 years

the number of plays produced that were written by women

seems to have vacillated between 12 and 17 percent

http://womenandhollywood.com/2010/03/16/text-of-theresa-rebeck-laura-pels-keynote-address/

He did, however, silently support these endeavors.  Not the same way my mom did, but he recognized it as important, and he went to many, many recitals (Thanks, Dad, I now know that must have been a small yet slow form of torture.)  We Hoben Girls were afforded the privilege of dance classes because in some small ways we never noticed, my mom and dad had sacrificed.  And in an otherwise conservative Midwestern upbringing (uniforms, station-wagon, and we never had a dish-washing machine while I lived at home) such extravagances now stand out.

So, I was eleven when I attended the second of what would eventually become a career in auditioning.
I did not achieve my dreams that day.

I was given the results of my second audition in a sealed envelope like the few other girls that also tried out that day.  I was the last kid to be picked up, and I sat by my eleven year old self in the lobby area thinking --as is my tragic flaw to date-- that I nailed it!  I had executed the choreography, smiled throughout (genuinely), and softened my fingers and wrists so as not to have "ice-cream-scoop- hands" as Alan called it.  So in a cruel twist of irony, I held my paper rejection in two little hands just a few inches below my big proud grin.  Two of the dance teachers who had evaluated me that day peered from their office at the end of the hall.  They must have been looking for a reaction, but I had none because I was being patient and obedient and not opening the damn thing until I got home like they told me to!  

I am so dumb.  

This cheerful naivety makes sense on an eleven year-old, but on someone in her thirties, it's an entirely different thing.

It was a Saturday.  My mom was elsewhere; she of Pink-Tights-and-Bobby-Pin-Knowledge.  She who understood all about ice cream-scoop-hands and probably, too, that my ankles were still too weak and my dancing still too awkward to have a real shot at it.  So my dad was the one who picked me up that day.  I wonder if they had discussed how this afternoon might go...  Once home, I called my sister and neighborhood friend Erin Rafferty (both of whom were proud members of the Alan Miles Ballet Company) to come share in the big news.

Big Mistake.

Big

Huge

Fat 

Lesson Learned

(Today, for the record, I rarely even mention when I go on an audition, sparing anyone else from sharing the pain of rejection which is always a possibility.)

We three sat on the couch in a heap of giggles as I carefully but hastily slit open the envelope.  The giggles halted abruptly.  But at eleven, I did not have the subtle grace to just cry a little and let them hug me and then get out on our bikes and ride to Rite Aid for an Almond Joy.  No.  I shrugged and tried to laugh about it.

(Another emotional avenue that I try to avoid in adulthood, 

having learned at that young age that it just makes me look a little loco, 

and kinda creepy, and no one believes it anyway.) 

While Katie and Erin looked at me with sympathetic (and sort of frightened?) expressions, it became clear that it was up to the Engineer in the room to handle the emotional mop-up.  I've never discussed this event with my dad, but in hindsight, I'd felt guilty that he had been left to deal with this mess, the way I felt when mom was gone and he had to maneuver all our hairs up into ponytails.  Ponytails and Crying just fell into mom's domain, the way Tire-changing and Long Division fell into his.  I know it seems sexist, but that's just the way it was for me.

* A Note:  My father tried several times

to imprint on me the basic principles 

of tire-changing

and oil-changing.

It's not his fault that I managed to forget every detail.

 . . .  and that I broke the latch-thingy that holds the front hood up.

My dad ice-cream-scooped me up, and carried me to my room.  He suggested that I take a nap which, although today is exactly what I do when rejection strikes too hard for me to bear (last Thursday is proof), at the time felt more like punishment.  Katie and Erin got back on bikes and breezed off for candy bars and I was left to face Ineptitude, a monster with whom I've learned to spar at an impressive level, though who still occasionally kicks my ass.  On this day, "Monster I." was winning (I am eleven for Chrissakes, go pick on someone your own size.)  I couldn't sleep.  I couldn't play.  Thoughts of pink tights and leotards were just a drag.  Essentially, I had no tools for this malfunction.  No one had taught me how to change this particular oil, and the latch-thingy on the hood was broken anyway.

After some time had passed, my dad came to my room; Saturday Casual instead of Business Casual.  I was surprised because he rarely came into the territory of clothing heaps and teen posters.  It was like NeverLand, which to my mother meant "Never Tidy" and to him meant "Never Go There."  I was embarrassed -not by the mess; I loved that shit in heaps on the floor- but because I was still crying.  My parents never cried, at least not in the 1980s.  They weathered those years together like a stone wall of sensible defense against our emotional preteen tidal waves: Stoic German Weirdness that I only I hope I can call upon should I mother a Princess Brat that is anything like I was.  My Dad sat on the edge of my bed and asked how I was doing.  I pretended I was fine,

(Livin' and Learnin', people.

Remember, I am still only eleven.)

but as I tried to form a convincing second sentence I crumbled into more tears.  Monster I. stood on a nearby teddy-bear in triumph.  My dad didn't say anything.  But he leaned over and hugged me for a long time, restoring my self-worth at a rate that only an eleven-year-old knows.  When he left Never-Go-In-Land, he seemed really sad.  Sometimes, when I recall the day, I remember that he, too, was crying, but then I wonder if maybe I made that part up. . .   

I, myself felt incredible!  The Monster was gone, my dad thinks I am awesome, and there are candy bars and bikes in my near future!  Alan Miles Ballet Company can get stuffed!  By the time my mom got home I was, like, 98% recovered.

I am now just about the age my Dad was when I was eleven.  And I suspect that, at that age, he was not sad for me that I did not get into the Alan Miles Ballet Company.  Rather, I suspect he knew:

That I probably was not going to pursue Electrical Engineering.

And this was probably not the last rejection mop-up for me.    

And that he would not always be there when the Monster was getting the better of me.  

And no matter how foreign pink tights are from oil-changes, I'm his kid, ya know? 

And if I was going to carry on with this intention, he was going to have to watch it.

I am still rejected on a weekly basis (no exaggeration.)  The odds are against me, as before, though unfortunately, I know it now.

When my dad came to see the last play that I wrote and performed in, he shone with pride from the third row, and later joked that his urging of my career toward engineering and away from the theatre was a mistake.  

I am not sure that I agree. 

I cry a lot.  

I take a lot of naps.  

But I get up and do it again.

Because My dad thinks I'm awesome.  Get stuffed.