Babe-in-arms + Children-in-tow

I have a good Mama friend who is an amazing and inspired Dancer and Choreographer. She is also a Mama to two kids under six. She has been working on a dance performance for over two years now titled "Before and After: Kids" It is a beautiful community collaboration of adults and children dancing together and separately, moving with bodies colliding; children suspended from their parents who are just trying to keep moving, just trying to schlep to find a moment of peace. The dance is an appropriate metaphor for life with children. The rehearsals, even more so.

I had the pleasure of participating in this controlled artistic chaos last spring, along with my two children. As a small business owner, interested in advancing a more Mother-friendly environment, It was thrilling for me to watch my friend direct, dance and mother simultaneously. The scene at rehearsals certainly was not what one might expect from movie scenes of prim and proper dance studios and instructors. Instead the room was loud and sticky, swirling with creativity and positive play energy. Often, my friend would be in the middle of her dance solo, only to have her toddler collapse into a fit of need to be with his mother; to be connecting with her body in some way. I know this Mama-Baby dance well, as my youngest is also a toddler, now cruising through the proverbial terrible two's. During the first year of opening my business, I completed almost all of my tasks from teaching, to finance, to sewing design with babe-in-arms and often older child-in-tow. I often wonder about my child-free self and what I ever did with all that time, all that quiet, all that money? I can hardly remember, it all seems like a dream.