Ballet Slippers as a Rite of Passage

by Samantha Gianulis

Her pink ballet slippers slide on her feet easily with the silkiness of the white tights she wears.  She is holding my shoulder with her little hand as I secure the required shoes for the practice of chassés. In the expressive medium known as dance, my little girl gets to be a little girl. How long will it last? I would like it to last forever, but her pink ballet shoes are a symbol of her young life’s evolution…newborn socks, little summer sandals, size nine Mary Janes and pink baby Uggs, now ballet slippers. She has done her pre-requisite tumbling, dilly-dallied through ice skating lessons and rejected pee wee soccer, now here we are at a dance recital; her first statement of her own identity, and she’s only four years old.

Up until four months ago my daughter Zoë was the baby, before her little sister came along. Now she has reluctantly moved into the middle child spot, regressing a little bit as expected, but gracefully finding something to call her own. With any luck, that is what kids ought to do; find their thing, and thrive. I think I have spent hundreds of dollars on classes, activities, and the appropriate gear finding her “thing”, but it was money well spent...

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They Say It's Your Birthday – We're Gonna Have a Good Time

by Sari Grandstaff

It was my daughter’s third birthday, and we had just moved to a new area.  I was having those “first children’s party jitters” all over again.  A home party was out of the question since our temporary quarters – a little bigger than my daughter’s dollhouse – were too cramped to fit even the Fisher Price^® family of four, let alone twenty human three-year-olds. 

I ended up booking the party at a child-friendly chain restaurant in the local mall.  The restaurant featured a clown on Sunday afternoons who entertained with balloon animals and tricks.  The staff was very reassuring and I heard many successful-party stories from the other nursery school mothers I was meeting in our new rural home. 

When the day of the party finally arrived, my husband and I were at the restaurant early to decorate.  Trying to make a “competent-yet-stylish mother” impression, I was wearing a rayon print, vintage jumpsuit that my mother had bought for me in a boutique.  The mothers swooped in to drop off their children and immediately took off for a few peaceful hours of unimpeded mall shopping...

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Reunion

by Elaine Jordan

I walk across the grassy yard—shaded by two orange trees and bordered by thriving rose-bushes—on a row of circular stepping stones. My open sandals slap a noisy approach. I hear Judy call, “It's open!” and let myself into the house, just as I used to when we were children and she lived on Deerfield Avenue.

Judy meets me in the front room wearing a violet-colored dress, her short hair in familiar curls around her face. She still has straight bangs, creating a harsh line above the parenthesis of curls. I approve of that look. She’s frozen in time, looking like the ten-year-old I remember.

It’s a comfort to be back in San Gabriel – away from children and husband – in this respectable suburban home with its blessed California orange trees out front. I’m in touch with my roots, and my roots go down into this earth nurturing the orange groves. Judy’s neighborhood reminds me of our childhood territory, a blissful place where children ran barefoot, obeyed their parents, and never screamed in tortured despair. Judy lived in that former place, along with my benign parents, and a sister, and a dog. I lived there too and go back to it in my fantasies...

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Faith

by Megan Schwartz

I’ve been reading The Life of Pi by Yann Martel this weekend, one of my favorite books of all time.  In it, a young man goes through a harrowing journey across the ocean in a life raft, after losing his entire family, kept company only by a Bengal tiger.  The main character, Pi, is a man of faith.  Some may say he’s a man of many faiths, but I think he has only one.  Though he celebrates his love of God through many religions, (he is a practicing Christian, Hindu, and Muslim), his faith is neither confused nor splintered.  It is, rather, clear, focused, and very beautiful.  

I’ve often had difficulty explaining my faith and beliefs, since they don’t fit into the standard mold.  I was raised Christian, in a very “here’s what we believe, but who’s to say we’re right and always question everything” sort of way.  At different times in my life I have renounced the existence of a god, had my faith restored, broken, and pieced back together again in new and ever expanding patterns...

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Adrift

by Regina Walker

I am feeling emotionally adrift these days. I have always been prone to internal storm, and though I know it is not the healthiest way to conduct a life, knowing doesn't always translate into changing. At least not for me. My tendency to create a certain amount of chaos in my own life can feel almost unintentional, but I know I need to make that which is unconscious conscious. I have paid a high price for diversion, and I no longer can afford it. I guess my awareness of that tendency is slowly emerging and becoming conscious. Perhaps that is a form of improvement, though I just don’t always like what I see. Chaos is a habit, a bad habit of mine and it is exhausting, especially as I get older. I am feeling a bit burned out, and I find myself questioning everything.  I don’t trust myself anymore. I used to love to write but I find myself now having difficulty getting words out, and once I do, I just tear them to shreds.

I guess I am a lot like my son Sam in that way...

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