Decisions...

The Spring Recital is a big show. I mean, the Nutcracker is THE show, but the Spring Recital is for the dancers, not the audience. This is what they prepare for all year. There are no auditions, because you are already in if you are in a class. You audition for the Nutcracker. Not all of your friends make it in, and sometimes, you don't make it in. Its a high pressure environment, one which my daughter, Skyylynn (ballerina, above) has overcome for the last 5 years, auditioning for and receiving a part in dancing's "Big Show" each of the 5 years. The fear of watching your friends perform while you watch is very real, and so far, she has only been on the stage looking at the crowd, and not the other way around. The Nutcracker is as close as dancing gets to hockey, because the show must go on. Parents and instructors coach their kids, and you hear stuff like:

"OK, if you feel a little pain, don't show it until you are off stage..."

"Unless you are obviously injured, try to work through it..."

"Don't you dare miss a cue unless you are unconscious..."

And so on. Hell, I'm guilty of all of that, having coached Skyy to ignore the crowd, the lights, and above all, personal discomfort. There are 8 shows, sometimes two a day, and after all, pain is secondary.

The show MUST go on. Period.

Until now. Three days prior to the big Spring Recital, Skyy fractured her patella (kneecap). Half jokingly, I say to her, "It's just fractured, right? You still going to do your recital?" and started walking away. After all, I was just trying to cheer her up. Surely she knows the difference between the Spring Recital and the Nutcracker. There's no way she could...

"Yeah, I could do it."

I froze. OK, so yeah, I had said all these things, but now I was being called out. My baby was telling me that she could do it. A tap, jazz, and ballet routine on a fractured patella. I turned, cleared my throat, and took a breath, preparing to deliver a resounding "NO", but my breath caught in my throat, and a bunch of memories ran in streaming video through my head like a filmstrip in super fast forward:

My father's stories of playing injured on the soccer field.

Me and my brothers in high school rowing with a myriad of injuries, with my father's OK.

My son being carried off the soccer field, only to return in the second half, with my OK.

Steve Yzerman playing the entire Stanley Cup run on one leg.

So how could I really tell her no? All of our heroes played injured, right? Was this not her chance to play injured, and stick it out and be the hero? Had she not already seen her Dad and brother do this very same thing? Well....no. She hadn't. Not really. I finally spoke, and what came out was not "no" but "let me call your Papa". So I called my dad, 40 year veteran of Sports Medicine Physical Therapy. He would know. Midway through the conversation, I realized that i should have just said "no" because that's exactly what he was going to say, and I knew it. Skyylynn represents fully 33.34% of his grandchildren, and he sure as hell wasn't going to jeopardize a lifetime of dancing for one Spring Recital.

I explained all of this to Skyy, who looked at me levelly and in a matter-of-fact voice told me that she knew that she wasn't going to be able to do it. Great, I thought. She understands! In our family, playing hurt is a given. We have all done it, from hockey to soccer to softball and on and on. Me, the wife, the step kids...now my kids. Still...I would always wonder if she could have, right? No. The end of our conversation was her telling me what I really knew all along:

She said: "This is just Spring Recital dad, its not like its the Nutcracker or anything."