I vividly remember the dress I got to wear when my beginner ice-skating class had roles in Robert Crown's Nutcracker on Ice circa 1978. The dress was white with a three-tiered skirt that billowed out for as long as I could spin fast enough. I believe my group were all sugar plum fairies, but I don't remember the moves skated, just the dress. I am aware of no photographic evidence of my participation in the production, but I was delighted that an Internet search for "children's production of Nutcracker on Ice" led me to the photo above, which is the same arena at which I took skating lessons as a child. Click the photo to bring you to the page. Perhaps they'll have shows this winter as well.
In fact, I was enrolled in skating lessons for quite a while, though memory certainly warps my sense of time. I believe I took lessons every Saturday morning for years. I remember that my parents would drop my older sister and me off at my grandmother's house in Evanston, Illinois every Friday evening. We'd spend the night there, and my grandma would take us to our lessons the next morning. Then, my parents would return to pick us up sometime on Saturday. We often bought obscene amounts of ice cream at a local store on our way home. What a gift my parents and grandmother were able to give me--learning to skate has been a game-changer for me; as you probably know from last week's post, I count playing adult hockey among my many joys.
Flash forward nearly thirty years to when my daughters were seven and ten or thereabouts. I realized that what I knew to be a gift to me also meant that my parents got every Friday night off. They didn't need to hire a sitter and could go out to do whatever they wanted. Realizing how cleverly my parents played their hand, I told my mom that I had figured out how lucky they were to set up a system that I thought was for me, but was actually a win-win.
Without missing a beat, my mother who never gets to spend as much time with her granddaughters as she would like, replied that it was a win for her mother, too, as she got time with her grandkids every week.
How many activities can you think of that are win-win-win situations? All three generations got what they wanted. Not too shabby, right? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
I look forward to your posts each week. They — and you — are a gift.
Thanks so much, Mary, that’s super sweet! I can’t believe it’s been so many years since we met — do you ever make it to the East Coast? I’d love to see you in person again sometime. Maybe I’ll be in Chicago sometime this summer.
Wow! I can’t believe RC is still producing that show. My memories match yours exactly–including the belated realization that our parents were enjoying the time off from us.
And not related to your point, but the one extra detail I remember is that they didn’t give us the multi-tiered, eyelet lace; they gave us the pattern, assuming our mothers would buy the fabric and sew it themselves. Neither our working mother nor our working grandmother were particularly interested in that kind of home ec project, and grandma hired a seamstress to make the dresses for us. And I think even as children we thought they were tacky and ridiculous.
So funny. I had forgotten about having the dresses made, but your “tacky and ridiculous” is apparently my “super cool”!