Magic in the Darkness on a Sunny Saturday Afternoon

“They’re all dressed so beautifully!” I squealed, feeling more excited under the strikingly blue sky on this sun filled Saturday afternoon than I can remember feeling in years. The grass and the path leading to the theater were scattered with little girls in dresses, woolen tights, boots with pink ponpons, colorful sweaters and buttoned coats. Oh, and with their mothers, of course.

“It looks like children come to performances at this hour,” my grandma said, worried that her young granddaughter was not quite young enough for this.

“They must feel like princesses,” I said, and quickly added, “It’s amazing that they are exposing their girls to the ballet this young.” I wanted her to know that, suddenly, there wasn’t a smidgen of doubt in my mind that I will enjoy what was waiting inside.

When my grandmother called to tell me that she bought me tickets to The Nutcracker performed by the Israeli ballet for my birthday I was touched that she had been listening when I hinted at my boyfriend that I had not seen dance in some years and wanted to. I was also slightly frustrated that she could not differentiate between the gooey and intriguing modern dance I like to sink into and classical ballet, but I shared nothing of this thought with her.

So Saturday I found myself sitting in a dark theater surrounded by little princesses as warm waves of excitement undulated through my veins leaving me with a permanent smile.

Ballerina snowflakes danced behind a backdrop of pine trees in the night and white snow lightly fell and dusted them. For the first time since I was a child I believed a world in the dark, slipping out of my reality and my analyses and my criticisms completely into a realm where magic lives, where magic is. A snow globe came to life before me and I allowed tears to trickle down the warm skin of my face and to the corners of my mouth at the  shattering of cynicism in the presence of this beautiful and soft enchantment. And what thought slide into my mind? “Leila would LOVE this.” In my mind’s eye I saw the cover of a book with a drawing of a winter backdrop built with pine trees and falling snow. I think there stood a girl in a red and white dress against it. We must have been eleven. In my visual flashback, I saw my Leila holding the book with the drawing on its cover in her little girl hands as if it were the most precious object in the world.

-Dror

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