Dear Mom Claire loves her dance shoes

Dear Mom Claire loves her dance shoes

It was Wednesday night. Dance class is at five o’clock we need to leave the house at 4:30 so naturally at 4:00 I tell Claire to go put on her dance outfit. I learned a long time ago not to wait till the last minute. She comes back a bit later with her skirt and shirt on but no shoes.

“Where are your shoes Sweetie?” She looks at her feet and almost seems surprised her shoes are not on them.

“I don’t know, I can’t find them.” This is accompanied with a shrug and a sideways nod of her head.

“Sweetie, you can’t go to dance class without your shoes, look in your shoe drawer.” She runs off to her room and I can her rummaging around in her shoe drawer. She does not take long and is back to me, still with no shoes.

“You have to help me Dad, I can’t find them.” I look at the clock, it is almost 10 after, good thing I started this at four o’clock!

After rummaging through her shoe drawer the shoes are nowhere to be found. It occurs to me half the shoes in the shoe drawer do not fit her anymore I should give them away. None-the-less, I distinctly remember dropping her dance shoes into the shoe drawer after class last week. So I meticulously take every shoe out of the drawer and put it into a pile, to make sure I have not missed them. When you flatten them out and wrap the laces around them, they are very small and I am worried I have just missed them. Alas, they are not on the drawer. Claire is standing behind me and surprisingly does not mention the incredible mess I am making in her room.

If the shoes are not in her shoe drawer then she must have taken them out of the drawer. I think back over the last week and try to remember if I had seen her practicing in her shoes. There were a couple times I can remember her doing hop two threes up and down the hall, but I do not remember her wearing shoes.

“When did you put your shoes on this week? Where did you put them when you were done playing with them?” As I say this I am checking under her bed.

“uhhh.” She looks around the room, “I think I put them in that pink drawer.” She points to a drawer usually reserved for Barbie stuff.

“Well, look in there and see if your shoes are there.” I am not hopeful, she looked a lot like she was just making stuff up to feign helping. I was pretty sure she had no idea where her shoes were. It was 4:20.

“I have been looking for this Barbie!” She held up a Barbie Doll triumphantly.

“Claire, we are looking for shoes, put the doll down and find your shoes!” Time was running out and she was not instilled with the proper sense of urgency. “If we don’t find your shoes, you will miss dance class!”

She was now standing in middle of her room, frantically looking around. Nothing was jogging her memory, but she did feel the sense of urgency I was looking for.

She really loved dance class. Days lost their names now and took on new meanings. Monday was two days before dance class, Tuesday was the day before dance class. Thursday was the day after dance class. Some days she did not walk around the house, she would hop two three everywhere. It was similar to skipping only it was Irish dancing.

I had checked in my room, under my bed, in other drawers, in the living room, I even looked in Carnahan’s crate on the outside chance he had used them as a chew toy, which would have undoubtedly lead to him being sold to an experimental laboratory. It was 4:27

I remembered hearing a friend of mine describe how, when she was eight, had received her first pair of ballet point shoes, she had stared at them for hours just sitting in the box. She had been in ballet for three years, but this was her first pair of point shoes. Just then I thought of something. I walked over to her bed. There was a menagerie of stuffed animals scattered over it. Most of them were tucked in with various blankets as if ready for bed. I tossed a few of them around. I looked under her pillow, and there were her dance shoes. Still together, flat, with the laces wrapped around them binding them together.

I looked over at Claire and she had a look, half, “I wonder if I am in trouble,” half “Oh yea, I forgot I put them there.”

“Let’s go!” I said. I scooped her up, still shoeless and carried her to the front door. Out the door into the car and we were off. She still had not mastered putting her own shoes on so that would have to wait till we got to the studio. I was still shaking my head in disbelief. She had been sleeping with her dance shoes.

“I wish I was a real Irish dancer.” She said this with a dreamy, melancholy lilt in her voice.

“You are a real Irish dancer,” I told her.

“No, I mean up on a stage at the Irish festival, like a real dancer.” She corrected me.

“Remember last year, the little girls in the black Irish dresses, they were not much bigger than you. I bet you will be up on that stage maybe even by next year.”

“Really? When I am six or seven?” she had a certain wonderment in her voice now.

“I would not be surprised.” I said. She clutched her shoes to her as if holding a teddy bear.

“Where are we going to put our shoes when we get home?” I asked her.

Claire looked at me, “In my shoe drawer,” she consented.

Love Mike