REMEMBERING MY AFICIONADA MOM ON MOTHERS’ DAY 2012

I had written this post in bits and pieces throughout the day this Mothers’ Day, but I didn’t feel worthy of actually posting it until I trained today and felt my mother’s presence through the music and movement. So here it is:

Mothers’ Day has been a bittersweet holiday for the past 5 years. My mother lost her valiant and longer-than-expected battle with colon cancer 6 weeks after my last pre-maternity leave performance.

It’s because of my mom that I had every opportunity as a child to take ballet classes, figure skating lessons, piano lessons; my siblings and I also performed Filipino, Hawaiian, and Tahitian dance all over NJ, and my mom acted as sort of our rehearsal dance mistress. But it’s also because of my mom that I didn’t pursue my dream of becoming a professional dancer and choreographer in college but instead got my very “practical” M.D.

We didn’t get along well at all, my mom and I, when I was growing up. We clashed over pretty much everything. I saw us as opposing poles on the earth. It wasn’t until my dad died that we began to see eye to eye. I started to appreciate her lessons about money and survival, and she started to realize that sometimes the most impractical things in life are the most life-sustaining.

My mom visited me a lot after my dad died, and it was during this time that I started dancing professionally. My mom flew halfway across the country to see my shows; she sat in on the company workshops that I attended, and she met the masters who taught them. The maestros called her “Mama” even though most of them were older than she was. She thought Luis Montero was the perfect gentleman, she thought Ciro was a shrewd businessman. And for some reason she thought Manolo Rivera would answer the question that burned inside her, so she asked him: “Why did you choose her?”

She told me that she had asked Manolo this question – Manolo Rivera, an artist so brilliant that his perfect technique is invisible – and I had to fight the lump in my throat. I was making money as a dancer – wasn’t that good enough for her?

Manolo, the man who first inspired me though his sheer beauty to take more than one class a week, gave her his answer: “She has something very special, a spark.” As she repeated this sentence to me, I heard her acceptance, her… satisfaction. She could finally admit that I was a dancer.

My mom would quickly embrace my life as a dancer. She traveled with me on one of my choreography-learning trips to Spain, and it was basically a grand shopping spree – her treat. It was also a time for us to talk – about men, about kids, about our disappointments and triumphs. It turned out that we had a lot more in common than I had ever wanted to admit.

In the end, I can say with 100% confidence that my mom was my Number One Fan. The last actual Mothers’ Day we spent together, she had come to Milwaukee to watch a recital of some of my students. While I was backstage preparing the students, I received the phone call recruiting me to rebuild the flamenco program at the University of New Mexico – Taos. So it ended up being a bit of a self-centered day. I would give back all those dresses she bought me for one more Mothers’ Day to focus on her, share everything I’ve got with her, show her a great day on the town… but she would never want that, the returning of the dresses. I know for a fact that she enjoyed buying those dresses and watching me perform in them as much as I enjoyed dancing in them. And as a mom myself I know how that really feels, the joy of watching my own daughter explore Los Angeles in a new/vintage beaded top and coordinating jaunty hat and sparkly belt from a major spree, my treat, glowing with her personal style -- she’s a theatre girl, a stage manager, you know…

So… perhaps the best I can do for now is keep on training. I still have a long way to go before I can unearth my beloved dresses and perform; my first official comeback show is coming up in the fall, and now I’ve got another one on the books next spring…

For those of you who still have your mom here on earth: enjoy her presence each day. For those of you who miss your mom because she’s not here on earth: go ahead and DO some THING that she would really like you to do. And, BTW, that fabulous, massive, red and black bata de cola that I'm wearing in the photos in the Simone Bonde, Photographer, post on the Marketplace page of this blog? Perhaps my mom's greatest purchase ever.