Tchaikovsky

So, yeah, it was 65 degrees - but, still, it was also December 22, and a Sunday, and so Baltimore was peppered with productions of The Nutcracker. L. had already arranged, with the parents of four other children from Cleo's nursery school, to meet at the matinee, and so it was with some excitement that Cleo climbed up into a big, plush seat at the Lyric, traded a few words with Oliver and Mary Anne, and got ready for the show.

But she wasn't the only one excited. After all, Cleo had already seen the ballet performed last year, and she's listened to it at least a dozen times on drives to and from school. Of course, I was in the car for a lot of those playings, too, but had sometimes been swapping news or stories with L., or gathering wool in the driver's seat. More to the point, though, I don't believe that I had ever, in my 43 years, seen a live performance of Tchaikovsky's holiday favorite. And so I, too, approached the show with real curiosity.

Put me down as pleased. Sure, the production was staged by the School for the Arts, and so there were some of the problems that you might anticipate in a high school performance: a few apparent difficulties with synchronization, and perhaps a lack of affect on the part of a few dancers. But some of the dancers  - the Nutcracker himself, for instance - were outstanding, and the music (performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) was utterly rich and professional.

But perhaps the most memorable aspects of the afternoon, from our perspective, involved the reactions of our kids. At one innocuous moment, as ballerinas gathered gracefully in the Land of the Sugar Plums, 5-year-old Forrest announced, in a voice that could be heard for several rows, 'I've got a bad feeling about this.' Cleo, on the other hand, watched in relatively rapt attention until one moment well into the second half of the show, when the Russian dance began and she suddenly turned to us and loudly exclaimed, 'Tchaikovsky!'

That's right, honey. It was Tchaikovsky. And now I have a sense of why parents take their children to see and hear it, year after year.