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| My own ballerina. Notice the dress. Ignore the ketchup. |
It was pretty.
It was playful.
It was elegant.
It was magic.
And when I wore it, I was all of the above . . .
I had reached the excellent and grown-up age of four.
One day, Mom, who was shopping with Dad in the big city of
Lethbridge, came home with a gift for me.
A white, esthetically (and ecstatically) pleasing crinoline.
Okay, I will admit it was intended to be worn with my new ‘Aunties-Wedding/Church’
dress.
To make it fuller and ‘froufy’. (Real four-year-old word.)
But let’s face it. Who wants to wear a dress in the first
place?
Am I right?
So I wore it by itself.
With my little, sleeveless undershirt and white panties, it
made me look like a ballerina. So what else could I do?
I ballerina-ed.
I dipped and hopped and twirled.
I soon discovered that said twirling made my new garment fly
out in the most magical way.
I danced all over the house and, when I could escape the
watchful eye of my mother (who foolishly insisted I was dressed solely in
underwear) out in the yard.
It also looked quite smart over my jeans, snap shirt and
little red boots. Lending my outfit an elegance it struggled to achieve on its
own.
And flying gracefully in the breeze caused by the fat,
churning legs of my running pony, it made me feel as though I had somehow
managed to sprout wings.
Yep. Magic.
Of course, Mom had a lot to say about me wearing my
now-formerly-white crinoline out in the barnyard.
And separated us decisively. Laundering my beautiful garment
carefully and then hanging it in her closet ‘out of reach’.
Which actions failed entirely in their objective.
Oh, the cleaning worked.
Just not the enforced separation.
A chair and a couple of stacked boxes later, my crinoline and
I were reunited and dancing once more around the dining room table.
The reason I bring this whole topic up is because I was
shopping with Husby over the weekend.
And there, in the aisle of a store selling such prosaic
items as: washers. Baling twine.
Hammers.
Was a little ballerina. In jeans, a snap shirt and little
cowboy boots.
As her mother hunted for chicken feed, the tiny girl was
twirling.
It made the crinoline she had pulled on over her ensemble stand
out in the most magical way.
I admit it. It made me cry happy tears.
And isn’t that what a beautiful ballerina is supposed to do?
