ch-ch-changes

Big things are happening here in "twenty-something"-ville. Namely, remember how I've been talking about how my life has been kind of directionless and boring this summer? How there have been many days of nothing-to-do blues? Well today I find myself looking ahead a few hours to the moment where classes officially begin at the studio. I've been trying to decided how I feel about that moment. And the moments to follow where those classes continue to happen. Joe asked me if I was excited to go back to work and seemed unimpressed and unconvinced by my "uh... yeeeah" response, but I AM excited. Really and truly. I am so ready to get back to having a routine and a schedule and a purpose to my days. It makes the days where I have nothing to do really important, as opposed to dread-filled and monotonous. I am also ready to get back to my students, especially the ones who were begging for an extra advanced ballet class this year, even if it had to be from 8-9 on a Tuesday (I mean, who would not love to teach kids like that?).

But there is some anxiety as I sit here on the couch with my highlited class schedule beside me. And every year there is anxiety, because that is just who I am (I blame my mother. Sorry, Mom.) and I always feel a little antsy until I know exactly how everything is going to go down. But this year the anxiety is a little more... um... anxious. Mostly because of that whole having-a-baby-in-2-months-or-so thing. And that whole teaching-ballet-while-looking-and-feeling-kind-of-like-a-walrus thing.

So I tried to alleviate some of my anxiety by being PREPARED. Because I find in most instances it makes me feel better to know that, at least on my end, things are PREPARED. So I bought myself a pretty new notebook and some pretty new mechanical pencils (school supplies always help anxiety as well) and have been filling it with notes and ideas for new exercises and interesting combinations I found on youtube and syllabi for my younger students.

And this preparedness has helped. With the class part. Not so much the baby-coming part. For that though, I had my first baby shower this weekend. And talk about something making you feel more PREPARED... there is nothing quite like sitting in a newly-upholstered rocking chair surrounded by PILES of new baby stuff to make you feel like maybe you are actually getting ready to bring a newborn into your home. Not to mention being surrounded by women who are wonderful mothers and friends and role models, all smiling at you like they are just certain that you are ready for this and you are going to take these piles of stuff they have given you and do with them whatever it is you do when you are a mother and you will do it well, by golly. That amount of generosity and enouragement and faith really goes a long way in the preparation department.

But regardless of my state of readiness, both of these things are happening. Classes will start today, with children pouring into the studio in their new, clean leotards and their untied ballet shoes, some of them as anxious as I am, all of them excited. I will carry my new notebook and my case of CDs into the classroom and introduce myself as "Miss Greer" and slip back into the trappings of that part of my identity. The notebook will be helpful, probably more as a crutch and a reminder, and within a few weeks I will have forgotten what it's like to NOT be teaching every week.

And then, as the weather cools, my body will be doing its own work getting prepared. And my first child will make its debut into the world, greeted by tired, ecstatic, anxious parents, grandparents already so full of love and pride they could burst, aunts planning the millions of ways they are going to spoil and teach and play with their new little neice or nephew, and all of those women and men who bestowed gifts upon its mother ready to help when needed. And all of the stuff that is collecting in the nursery will be helpful, and will act as a crutch and a reminder, and within a few weeks I will have forgotten what it's like to NOT be a mother.