Black and Pink

This weekend Jamie will perform in her first ever dance recital (Saturday, June 6, 2pm at the East Syracuse-Minoa High School. Everyone is welcome!!) Watching her dance around the living room to practice her routine reminds me of when I was three years old and starting dance classes. My mother took me to the attic of the firehouse in East Syracuse. I remember the small stage, the music, and the voice that instructed us what to do with our hands, feet, toes, "Now spin around" coming from the record player. At the end of the session I remember being fitted for my first tutu. Every little girl's dream, right? Sure. But the tutu is what color? PINK? No, I cry. I don't like pink. My sister had been a bumblebee for her dance recital the year before and I wanted to wear her BLACK tutu. I would not wear a pink tutu. I won the argument and the proof I have is pictures of my first dance recital and somewhere, a VHS recording. Like a sore thumb I'm fluttering about on stage in a burgundy leotard, white tights and a BLACK tutu.
23 years later Jamie has been taking dance at the elementary school I attended when I was her age. Up on the stage in the cafeteria in a bright red leotard, white tights and ballet shoes is a little girl that looks eerily too much like her mother. As the recital approached a letter was sent home with instructions for the dress rehearsal and recital including how the girls are to wear their hair and what color tights and ballet slippers are to be worn. WHITE tights? Jamie is devestated. I don't want to wear white tights. I want to wear PINK! I was able to convince her that white would be better because all the other girls will be wearing white and we don't want them to be jealous of her pink tights. She thought for a minute and decided that she didn't want anyone to be upset with her either. So white tights it is.
I wonder if any of the girls in my dance class were jealous of my black tutu? Probably not.