Dancing (with two left feet)

In gym (P.E.) Maya has been learning to dance. Next term she will be doing basketball and last term she was doing American football, but this term she has been learning to waltz, tango, salsa, foxtrot and more. As with most things to do with school, Maya takes her dancing seriously. She practices at home, her arms held out in front of her for an imagined partner and her feet making patterns across the dining room floor. A few weeks ago, the school sent a letter home inviting parents to attend a celebration of the children's dancing. In the English state school context this would be a fairly minor event. After all, there are only 16 children in Maya's class and they had only been studying dance for two lessons a week over a period of six weeks. I envisaged maybe a handful of parents attending the school hall and the children reenacting some of their new dance moves to the accompaniment of a tape player in the corner (ok, I'm being slightly facetious - it would probably be a CD player... but you get my gist).
"Mummy," Maya announced, "I need a dress and shoes".
Maya is a tomboy. She lives in jeans and sneakers. Maya is also nearly a teenager. She is developing a teenager's inflection in the way that she speaks. For example, she has perfected the performance of that word "need" - leaning heavily and hypnotically upon the long 'ee' in a persuasive, coaxing and yet totally authoritative manner. We went shopping.
Maya is also very tall and, therefore, has rather large feet (this is a good thing; if she was this tall with small feet I think that she would fall over more frequently). We went shopping to a grown-up women's shoe shop where Maya found a beautiful pair of black satin pumps. She hurried me out of the store before I could change my mind about their suitableness.

The dance event was on a Monday evening after school. Maya mentioned that the other Grade 5 children across Cambridge had also been learning to dance and would be at the celebration. It wasn't a small event with a CD player in the corner. This was a huge pageant: girls were dressed up in mini-prom dresses, boys wore shirts and ties; the event was professionally compered; the hall was decorated with balloons and huge bouquets of flowers; hundreds of parents and grandparents and friends attended; a performance was put on by professional ballroom dancers as well as by the children.

Maya looked beautiful. We had walked down to the school hall, slightly flustered about time. I'd glanced down at her feet twice and told her that she had her shoes on the wrong feet. She danced really well: twirling and spinning and electric-sliding with the best of them. I was very proud of her, but wished that she had changed her shoes to the right feet (no-one but a mother would have noticed...)

After the professional dancers had finished and the hall began to empty as children started to go home, I sat Maya down so that she could learn how to put on her new grown-up shoes properly. It was only then that I realized that she was wearing two left shoes: one was a size 5 and a half, the other was a size 6 and half. Maya danced terrifically well, given that she was wearing two left feet. I can't wait to see how well she can dance in a matching pair (and she now has two matching pairs of black satin pumps in her wardrobe: one pair is sized 5 and a half and one pair is sized 6 and a half... what else is a mother to do?)