My Thoughts For Today

Aaron attended Ananda's dance recital last June, and decided he wanted to dance. He wanted to hip hop dance. I've always been sort of grateful Ananda didn't want to do hip hop dancing because the hip hop dancing girls tend to have the raciest costumes and moves at the shows and I just feel better watching her dance ballet and jazz. Their hip hop isn't out and out burlesque like an MTV video, but Dance Empire produces people who go on tour with Beyonce or end up on So You Think You Can Dance pretty regularly, so there is definitely some modern realism involved. But the boys' costumes and moves tend to be more "melt your heart adorable", aka a boy in a leather jacket doing an exaggerated tough walk and then some flips, concluding by rolling offstage on a big carboard motorcycle attached to a bicycle.

Ananda has been taking dance since she was 3 years old, and with the same teachers at this school since she was 4. She auditioned at the beginning of the summer for advanced and company classes, and did not get in. She took open advanced technique classes over the summer hoping to re-audition and get in, this Fall. And Aaron took hip hop for fun.

And was amazing. Like, Grant went in for 10 minutes once to try to see through a doorway and heard teachers talking about him. I had someone come out to my van to talk about him, which has never ever happened before. I got calls and emails URGING me to PLEASE bring him for end of summer auditions. And Aaron has been nuts about it, LOVING it, he randomly hip hop and breakdances all over the place all the time now to an extent that is alternately hilarious, annoying and dangerous (he's kicked someone in the head twice already).

So. I took them both to auditions. Ananda got placed in intermediate ballet for the 3rd time, which she likes and will have a spot in the recital. She is dissapointed but happy because they are offering modern and she really wants to do modern dance now, too. Also Candace, one of her favorite teachers, did say she could come and do "Pre-Junior" company jazz dancing. Pre-Junior as far as I can tell is company in training, as they don't actually compete or travel but they are considered part of the elite school and you have to audition in.

Aaron, though. He is in the age group for Pre-Junior Company. But they've bumped him up to Junior Company for EVERYTHING. Like, they want him to be in their ballet company, their jazz company AND their hip hop company, as well as taking extra advanced classes at the elite school. When I said, "I don't think Aaron even likes ballet", she said, "Well, I know when they're older they have to take ballet to be in other dances at company level, but they MIGHT let him off the hook since he's young...Ingrid would be so dissapointed though, everyone just really fell in love with him!"

For the record when I talked to Aaron about ballet, and how it's the foundation of other dance and builds your flexibility and balance, he was like, "Well I definitely need to do it then."

I have a lot of thought processes going on at once, here. For instance:

-Aaron is INCREDIBLY good at ANYTHING artistic or physical that he puts his mind to. So in a way I wonder if I should try to channel it another way or if this is just what he's doing right now. For instance, I posted a 5 minute clip of him playing piano, on facebook, and had a local piano teacher ask if she could come and teach him for free.

Aaron4.wma -


And that is really not even the half of it, he is so camera shy and just did a lot of the same things.

He "writes" poetry. This is one of his poems from last week, that he just came out of his bedroom to tell me he had made up:

You take a spoonful of bubbles
And on the double
Pour it on somebody's head
And after you pour it on somebody's head
They really shall be dead
But they really should not actually be dead
Because their brain dies
And after their brain dies
Their real eyes really shall be blank
And after their eyes are blank
They should be in a tank
With no bubbles at all.
And the water in this poem is flowing with flow-em
And as we said at the beginning
You take a spoonful of bubbles
And on the double
Pour it on somebody's head
And that is the end.

Not Shakespeare, obviously, but I think for an 8 year old boy I was right to be, uh, flabbergasted.

What with having SID and the problems he has with any kind of structured activity, hectic environment or trying to focus, I sometimes wonder if he is some kind of savant. When he was in Shaun's film the whole crew was saying we should sign him up as a child actor for UM and FIU for film students' films, and a couple said he should be modeling. But I don't want my kid to be a child actor with strangers making films about who knows what or a model.

Do I want my kid to be a hip hop dancer?

The thing with Aaron is, he can't do structured and directed, like I was saying...he can't read music, he can't handle an extended lesson in music theory, but he can sit down and play by ear. He doesn't write down his poems...he works them in his mind for a day or two and then can recite them over and over. He dictates to me. Starting years ago with that first little stanza, "We went boating/and we were floating/upon the seas/but there were no fishies". He taught himself to ride a unicycle through 5 grueling days of (I AM NOT KIDDING AT ALL) 8 hours a day of fierce quiet concetration and falling 500 times....but anytime Grant tried to help or suggest anything, he immediately lost interest.

So the fact that he likes dancing enough to enjoy standing in a line for half an hour waiting for his turn to try out, or doing repetetive drills for an hour in class, is pretty freaking AMAZING.

They said he doesn't know technique, but "he can DANCE", and they can teach him, and so and so "is already saying she wants to take him on the road".

Also: this conflicts with AWANA. They've been in AWANA for several years in a row, and do VBS at the same church every summer. I've been thinking lately how I really love that they are only a couple of years away from being a part of the youth group - they're in 3rd and 4th grade this year, and after 5th it switches over to youth group - because this church's youth group is super active and fun and does SO many things, and they'd be in it with kids they've grown up in AWANA with. On the other hand - Aaron didn't really like AWANA much last year, and if we're considering Catholicism seriously we might start to be aware of various conflicts. I don't know. I knew people who were in Disciples of Christ youth activities and were Catholic, as a teenager. *shrug* Isaac is going back as a Spark for the first time and Jake is starting Cubbies. He's all excited. Ananda's modern class also conflicts with AWANA. When I start thinking, "Soooo I'm pulling them out of this great friend-making scripture memorizing thing...to do hip hop dancing". I feel like an idiot. But the truth is it's not that simple. Maybe they'll sit the year out and then go back after VBS next summer. Or maybe we'll all be in RCIA and various Catholic kid classes on Sundays. Or both.

Then there is the "You want him to take how many classes at how many locations?" aspect which includes worries such as, We Can't Really Afford This and also I Have Five Kids And Limited Amounts of Time And Resources. The first one they're trying to work with us on, the second IS doable...but both are crunching us a little in ways we weren't crunched before the auditions. What were we thinking letting him audition?

And Annie, you know, Annie. My Ananda. *sigh*

She sat down at that piano a LOT, when we first got it. She rarely ever goes near it for a long time, though, because, well, people don't blink and freak and rave when she plays. Dance has always been HER thing, and that "Ingrid" I mentioned, who will be so dissapointed if Aaron doesn't want to START OUT in advanced company ballet? That is Annie's favorite teacher there. It can't be helped, we didn't do this on purpose, and blah blah blah...but sometimes I really feel for her. Today, I really feel for her. Like, Aaron learned to ride a bike with no training wheels before he turned 4. She was 9. He was coasting by her standing on his crossbar with no hands, or coasting by on his unicycle, while she fell down over and over. And I think sometimes of how if they were in regular public school, it would be SO REVERSED. She would be getting awards and excelling and loving all kinds of stuff while he sat around in ld classes and/or got into trouble.

I mean I guess right now Ananda is proudly putting away all her Abeka work for the day, finished, while Aaron holds his head in his hands and punches the table, alternately, over having to finish his very first assignment.

Great googly moogly there's just too much jumbled up in my head. I even think things like, "If Aaron is an attractive boy rocketing forward at a dance school, all those girls are gonna be all over him. Do I want him to fall in love with someone at AWANA, or someone at Dance Empire, let's be real." On the one hand - HE'S EIGHT! 8! NOT A CONCERN! On the other hand, I think it's quite likely he's going to get sucked in there and not reemerge for years and years. I could be wrong. Maybe he'll be back to soccer next year? But this kid has a very single minded dedication to things, like learning to read or ride a bike for example, that is almost frightening to behold.

Blah blah blah.

I just don't ever know what to DO with him, he has so MUCH, you know? My #1 priority has always been to preserve his love of learning and his self esteem as a boy who is somewhat different and would fall through the cracks in public school. I think I have basically managed that well, head in hands and table punching notwithstanding (he's just reaching this point as we get ready for a big break...actually he's finished now).

I am very proud of them both.