Well... so far, so good, as they say...
We're all still missing Dad, and now my uncle, but Miriam's coming through like a champ. I'm just coming off hip replacement surgery, and in the weeks leading up to the actual procedure she was getting more & more frightened. As she said, there had already been too much loss around the same time of the year and she was worried I'd be part of that.
I'm recovering very well now, in a LOT less pain than before the surgery, and Miriam has been happily checking in on her uncle every day to make sure he's really okay. :-)
Meanwhile, she's been busy -- not as in, "that's a lot of stuff to take care of," but far more into the, "holy crap, does this to-do list ever get shorter?!?" category. She spent much of the past couple of months in rehearsals for both her school's big annual musical performance and her studio's dance competitions; this often meant going directly from her last class of the day to the school auditorium for 3-6(!) hours of rehearsal every day, and during breaks & weekends going down the road to spend several hours at the studio fine-tuning and rehearsing her two solos and multiple duo, trio, and group dances.
Well, the big show was a resounding success -- Mom & I attended all 3 of the opening performances (Fir-Sat-Sun) and when trying to buy tickets the show's popularity was instantly obvious because tickets went on sale at 3:00pm and when I logged into the system at 3:02pm the auditorium was already more than half sold out for the entire first weekend. Long story short, the show was amazing (it's not a peforming arts school but they have some true virtuosos in their music & theater departments) and completely sold out the school's 1,000-seat auditorium SIX times in a row. Miriam was one of the dancers and after every show at least 2-3 people would come up to her gushing compliments, including members of the teaching staff who are already telling her she MUST audition for next year's show because she looked so good onstage.
This past weekend, Miriam danced in the season's 2nd competition. Her 1st solo, a more standard contemporary number, scored "platinum plus" and she was also awarded a special "golden ticket" (plus discount) for an invitation-only dance intensive held later this summer. Her less easily-classified piece, titled "All the Pieces of Me," is a fusion of classical Chinese dance & Western contemporary style, complete with parasol and Western-style music sung in Mandarin (a duet by Celine Dion and a Chinese pop star). She's been told by both the choreographers -- the young woman who teaches her Chinese dance classes and one of the teachers at the regular dance studio -- to expect lower scores on this solo due to it being unlikely that the judges would be familiar with how difficult the Chinese dance technical moves actually are... but she still scored "platinum" for this number's first competition appearance. Even better, the next day (the competition lasted 3 days), even though she was out of costume & had no makeup on, she was recognized in the hallway by one of the parents from a different dance team and told how lovely, special, and memorable that solo had been. Her comment to us about it was, "That's all the award I need for this dance." :-)
A little earlier, Miriam performed her fusion solo in public for the first time at a Lunar New Year celebration hosted by the county at a nearby library, and everyone there loved it. It was fun (and reassuring) to see one of the other performance groups -- a group of older Chinese ladies who regularly perform technically difficult classical Chinese dances with parasols -- oohing and aahing and applauding vigorously every time Miriam performed one of the more technical moves with her parasol.
The various group dances all scored between "platinum" and "platinum plus," with a trio dance she performed to "Hernando's Hideaway" winning 4th overall in its class. (The 1-2-3 positions were all taken by dancers from a massive team that had entered a total of 80 dances into the competition, and that we later learned was actually semi-professional.)
Somewhere in the middle of all the weeks of getting up at 6:30am and going-going-going until 9:00pm or later seven days a week, Miriam was also nominated for (and placed in) an AP English class for her sophomore year, which means she'll be eligible for college credits for the class. (She had already signed up for an AP U.S. History class as well, part of the legacy of her Grandpa's love of history.)
So... now that a really nasty February is past, and the insane rehearsal schedule has been cut by about 2/3, and Yours Truly is recovering quickly from surgery, Miriam is smiling a lot more and breathing a lot easier. She even gave us all a good laugh the other night when the rather complicated love life of a couple of her friends came up in conversation and she waxed eloquent on her love of being single "with none of the complications or negativity!" for several minutes with a big smile.
Ah, to be young again... You still couldn't print enough money to make me want to go through that period of my life again, but the Pipsqueak is absolutely killin' it. :-)
