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My Halloween Dancer5.Feb.2004My Ashley wanted to be a Princess Fairy for Halloween. So we borrowed a light mint green and silver dress with white gossamer wings for her to wear. She kept putting in on before the big day and looking at me with her big blue eyes for my approval. She knew she had it.Tonight she put it on and told me she wanted to dance. We pulled on new white tights to wear under the filmy dress so she could slide across the kitchen floor, arms moving up and down, turning circles and her eyes always on me to make sure I knew she was dancing for me. “I want to be a dancer Mommy”, she said as she glided past in a fluff of silver and light green. “You are sweetheart. You are.” I told her, as I watched my angel with Cerebral Palsy dance in her silvery gown with the white wings. Tomorrow night is Halloween and under her gown she will not wear little silver shoes to go with her gown. We tried some on the other day. One beautiful slipper slid easily on her left foot, but when I tried to place the matching silver slipper on her right foot, it wouldn’t fit. Her right foot is small and twisted, so pretty matching shoes won’t ever fit her feet. My mother’s heart ached when she asked me to put them on her. I knew they would not fit. As I tried to get her misshapen foot into the silvery slipper, I was worried about how she would react. She waited patiently as I tried, then when I told her it wouldn’t fit, she shrugged her shoulders, got up and went back to dancing in her gown. The other morning as we were getting dressed she told me that she wanted to be like her sister Allison. Allison didn’t have to wear a brace on her leg. It wasn’t fair. How come Allison didn’t have to wear one of those and she did? She wanted to wear pretty shoes. For three days we couldn’t find her leg brace and feared she had hidden it in the garbage. When we finally located it in the costume drawer, she grinned mischievously and denied any knowledge of how it had gotten there. At five years of age, Ashley is just coming to the realization that she is different from other little girls her age. Tomorrow night she will wear tennis shoes under her Fairy Princess Gown. Inside her right shoe, reaching up to her knee she will wear an articulated brace to help her walk and keep her balance as she goes to doors yelling Trick or Treat with her sister. I hold onto the fact that she will be walking up to those doors. There is no wheelchair and she will be able to shout ‘trick or treat’ with the best of them. This from a child that was not supposed to walk, much less talk, according to the early diagnosis of stroke. Ashley dances through my kitchen…she dances through my heart. She will dance through her life in shoes that might not fit anyone’s idea of what a dancer’s shoes should look like, but dance she shall. |
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Scripts modified from Matt Wright's guestbook. His scripts can be found at Matt's Script Archive
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