The Whole Kit and Caboodle

Throwback to that time where we hung out backstage and played "Spoons" all in an intermediate-ballet clump, only instead of "Spoons" we called it "Foundation" because Kelly had a ridiculous collection of Ben Nye in her Caboodle that she shared in the interest of everyone's boredom.These are the years where we're a young cohort, having fun, everyone just trying to fit in while we run around throughout the theater with various pairs of shoes, setting up our quick changes, everyone bragging about who's got the shortest one--"thirty seconds," brags someone, countered by someone else shouting, "sixteen." 

​We were barely teenagers then. Maybe twelve, or fourteen, but we'd danced together our whole lives. We got swept away in the competition for the best parts but when push came to shove, there we were, playing

My friend Julie (right) and me (left) circa 1997. My mom spent a LOT of time making those costumes.

"Foundation," everyone trying to quietly get their four-of-a-kind on the concrete floor of the dressing room, our faces made up with full eye makeup and red lipstick on our braces-lined teeth, looking more like twelve-year-old hookers to an outsider than anything else. We were all preoccupied with being professional ballerinas one day, determined to live out this dream until we were all dancing for ABT (did we know any other ballet company when we were twelve?). But we were young; we had time; and anyway we were so busy between rehearsal and homework that there wasn't time for anything else. We moved through the motions, did the performances, got our ten-year roses.

Dree (left) and me (right) ten years later, being awesome in our dressing room.

A few years later, we were senior dancers, sharing the upstairs dressing-rooms two or three to a room, playing the leads. It's the dream: the smell of sweaty feet and hairspray stuck in the tightly woven green carpets, Sharpied pointe shoes hung from costume hooks against the wall. We slipped raw spaghetti into the front of our costumes during dress rehearsal curtain call, sneaking bites during notes in an effort to not get caught eating in costume. We cried from late nights and too much stress. But it was all going to be worth it. We were prepared for--

​--for what? I think, my freshman year of college when I'm placed in Ballet II and have to re-learn all my technique (again). To have my Evil Queen photos--the highlight of my dance career ("Snow White," 2007) collect dust in the bottom of one of my mothers' plastic bins? Well, no, I tell myself; I'm practicing for a future career. Maybe not in ballet, because the shooting pains in my knee make pointework annoying, but maybe in jazz. I get good at jazz.​ ​ I find strength, I build muscle, I gain weight. I feel sturdy in jazz. I go to Ghana for three weeks, develop new life philosophies like I know everything in the world, and then come back with some simple, concrete knowledge: I hated rehearsing every day. I wasn't going to be a professional dancer. ​​

I was thinking about Caboodles the other day when I was thinking of the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle." I always had thought "Caboodle" was just a nonsense brand-name that went along with my cutesy, butterfly-clasped, sparkly purple stage makeup case, even though I'd heard the phrase plenty of times as a kid. I felt stupid when I finally put the two together. But it was great timing: it happened in a conversation where my husband was reminding 

Me (left) as the Evil Queen, Danielle Banuelos as a Mirror Maiden (2007).

me yet again of my humanness, reminding me yet again that my sanity came at the price of whittling down my extracurricular activities. ​The "whole kit and caboodle" turned from a sparkly purple box that smelled of loose powder and liquid eyeliner to an obscure reminder that my childhood is behind me. It became something I could no longer have. The sky is no longer the limit in adulthood. ​​

Source: Google.

​We now face the most crushing of blows: that "you can be whatever you want to be" was a lie. To be whatever you want can happen to the extent of your resources and your human limitations. Anything beyond that is either magic, insanity, or both.

Still: nothing is lost. This lie refocuses me on the career ahead that I've chosen. I can no longer do fouettes on the tips of my toes, but I've written an ending to the third full book I've ever written. It makes the path I've chosen that much more important, the dream that much more worth it if/when I accomplish it. 

​And we face the most delightful of realizations: that the people we played "Foundation" with are still around. That a new generation of girls is going into dance, learning how to use clear nail polish to keep pointe shoe ribbons from fraying, figuring out to turn out from the hip and what the quickest route is under the stage to get to the other side on time for a different part's entrance AND make a quick change. This new generation of girls is learning the power that their bodies can have, the good eating habits they need to resist temptation of falling prey to body image issues. These new girls get to learn these things because either we teach it to them or we take them to class.

And the friends whose feet we smelled in our dressing rooms, taking silly photos and writing ridiculous notes on the mirror--those friends are still around.