To Eleanora on Your 11th Birthday

[photos to be added] My little sunshine, What a year you have had! While I have always known you have a persistent streak, I’ve come to understand it much better this past year in all its shapes, colors, and sizes, and I’ve learned to embrace it as a big part of who you are. Last year it represented struggle in some ways, when you were working through school resistance, but I’ve also seen how much it has led you to unflinchingly pursue your goals. Most of this has been through dance – you had an amazing competition year! You were invited to ballet team, in addition to dance team. In ballet team, you had two solos for the first time – a classical variation, Bluebird from Sleeping Beauty, and a contemporary piece. These involved very intense private lessons, which was new to you, and you really grappled with your desire to do these pieces and the stress of the private lessons, where you received more critique and feedback than you ever had before. I thought it was going to be too much, and we almost ended it before you got very far into the year. But you made a decision to stick with it, and my how you flourished! Papa and I were so mesmerized during your first ballet competition, YAGP. Not only did we have tears in our eyes, but some of the other moms did too. Seeing how well you did, one of them asked me, “are you ready for this?” And all I could think was that we weren’t really ready but were just trying to keep up with your talent and where it took you. The second ballet competition took us to Atlanta for ADC/IBC, and what we imagined was going to be a pretty mild weekend turned out to be incredibly exciting. You had your classes on Thursday and your competition on Friday, and we were going to stay the whole weekend just to watch older teammates and stay for awards Sunday night. Well, one of the dancers in ensemble (the team dance, which you weren’t in), got sick and couldn’t come. When Ms. Gigi got there and learned what happened, she started worrying and everyone was trying to figure out what to do, because there wasn’t enough time to change the choreography for one less dancer and they thought they’d have to back out from competing in ensemble. Little did they know that you had studied everyone’s part and more or less knew it, and when you (somewhat jokingly) asked if you could take the dancer’s place, Ms. Gigi was so relieved! I admit that I had my doubts that they would allow it, only because you hadn’t been to any practices and I wasn’t sure how realistic it was for you to learn it in time. But everyone was on board, and they added several group practices over the weekend to get you up to speed. You were determined to not let anyone down. We all accepted that it wouldn’t likely place well, but it would be strong enough and definitely better than forfeiting. The ensemble competition came at the very end of the night, right before awards. The whole team spent the last couple days working extra hard, and we were already proud and just happy that we could still compete. We all held our breaths when you went, and we couldn’t believe how good it was! You never would have known that you hadn’t been rehearsing with the team all along, it was amazing! That was it, we all felt like we could go home happy. But then the awards started. You place in the top 12 for your contemporary solo! Then came ensemble, as they called 3rd place and 2nd place, we knew it wasn’t likely that our team would place. But then for 1st place, they announced Six Breaths!! We were all so elated and whooping and crying and hugging! Placing in 1st also meant the team made it to finals. What a little determined powerhouse you were! It was at that event that you earned your nickname from Mr. Julio, Genius. You also blew us away at the dance competitions. You had a beautiful duet with Caitlyn, Keep You Safe, and the two of you regularly placed 1st and 2nd at the competitions, and you won first place in your category at one of them for your solo! I also remember one competition where they were going to announce the number with the best overall score at the competition. The way they announced it was by playing the music for the number. Everyone was waiting to hear which group number it was, including all the older dancers and studios that regularly placed well. When they played the music, nobody really recognized it, including me. Everyone was looking around confused. But after a minute, we realized it was your duet song! We walked into competition season expecting that you would have fun and do pretty well, but we walked away knowing that you have such persistence for your goals that nothing will get in your way. Of course, not everything has been about dance, though it often feels like it. You have had emotional growth as well, though this may not feel as easy. Part of this has been about navigating friendships – you are the youngest one on your dance teams and girls around that age tend to explore different friendships and figure out how to get different reactions from each other and how to navigate feelings of jealousy, betrayals, etc. Your group is not immune to this, and although you tend to stay out of much of the drama, you’ve had to do your part in learning how to treat others or how to voice your difficult feelings in a direct way – something you utterly hate. I’ve also learned that you tend to be a one-friend kind of gal. You get along with the whole group and like different girls, but you tend to only trust one friend at a time, which has it benefits, but can also make it hard to be okay with your most trusted person doing things with other friends. But you are starting to develop close friendships with other girls, one at a time, and in different settings. Blending them all together is still hard for you, but this will come in time. Another way you have grown is with your acceptance of things you don’t necessarily want to do. Like school. It’s not that you truly don’t like school. In fact, you do really well in school and you are interested in it – as long as the teacher is engaging you. It’s more the idea of going to school. Getting up early for school. Being motivated for something that is not your own personal goal, but a goal society and your family set for you. And you had a rough couple of years. In third grade, you struggled with some school resistance and we realized then how perceptive you were of adults and the things they say and actions they take – you don’t miss anything and if there is a hint of condescension or judgement, you notice it and you worry that it could be directed at you at some point. You worked through a lot of this in third grade and ended on good terms with your teacher. But last year, your teacher, herself, had a really rough year, and it showed. She wasn’t the best fit for you, and we spent a lot of time trying to work through it and ultimately just accepting that sometimes you don’t get a great teacher. But this year, you have two awesome teachers who are very engaging and have the energy for what they do. While that has helped tremendously, you’ve also had a lot of personal growth and have done so well with getting up right away and facing the day even when it’s hard at 6:00 in the morning, a time at which few of us have motivation for life in general. I recognize that this is hard, and I so wish you could have longer to sleep and more balanced days, but this is a constraint we just have to work with. The plus side is that you get home early and get to have some chill time before dance, which you truly relish. We are just driving back from our 2nd “evacucation,” this time to Savannah, GA. We escaped Hurricane Milton, which was one of the worst hurricanes we’ve seen in our area for about a century. It was a Category 3, but it was coming directly for the Tampa area, and many in our area were still reeling from the storm surge effects of Hurricane Helene, which left many near water with flooded houses (only 13 days earlier!). We were away for almost a week, and your birthday happened to be during that time. I knew this would be disappointing to you, but at the same time we got to make a mini vacation out of it and explore a fun city and be away from the stress of the hurricane. You let me know you wanted your day to be special, even though it was the night before and early hours of the morning that the storm was passing through, so I was halfway focused on watching how it played out overnight and seeing how much damage may be done to our house and neighborhood. But Papa went out and got decorations for the hotel room, and we got up early in the morning and went in the bathroom to blow up “happy birthday” letters and balloons and tape them to the wall while you and Sissie were sleeping. I also managed to grab a few gifts we had at our house to bring on the trip so you had some presents to open. We went out to breakfast, walked around Savannah and did a little shopping, went out to lunch, and then rested for a while before the main event. We saw that there was a Mellow Mushroom nearby, so we got that for dinner and then went to get candy from Savannah’s Candy Kitchen, a tradition whenever we pass through. You loaded up your bag of candy, promising you’d take 2 weeks to finish it ;). Then we headed off to do a haunted house tour. We went to the Sorrel-Weed house in the evening and walked through the house while being led by a guide specializing in the supernatural. We learned of the spooky history of the house and tried to see if we would experience anything paranormal – apparitions in pictures of the mirrors, light touches, breezes, sounds, or even smells of residents who inhabited the house more than a century ago. Evie thought she heard a tapping sound when she sat in “Shadow Man’s” chair, and I felt a weird sinking sensation when I visited the private room in the carriage house where a woman was said to have hanged herself. It was fun to learn a little more about Savannah and its history and be enchanted with the idea of the supernatural on a cool, dark October evening. One thing I will absolutely cherish about this trip is some of the small moments we’ve shared. When we got a little restless in our hotel room, you and I would go down to the lobby and play Uno or Phrase Party and laugh the whole time. Or we’d hold hands walking and playing some alphabet game or another – seeing how many names we can say for each letter, with you making up some pretty questionable ones. While poor Sissie was sick with a stomach bug yesterday, we took a ride on the free ferry to get a little water tour of the area and we played the hand gesture add-on game, seeing how many silly gestures in a row we could remember with each of us adding on each round. And most of all, you still hug me and snuggle with me and let me kiss your head – such sweet moments that let me soak you in fully. I love you to the moon and back, and I can’t wait to see what this year brings! Love, Mama