Coming Right up

My younger daughter, S, told me yesterday that she has never seen a performance of The Nutcracker. I have to admit, I was floored at her announcement because I’ve seen it at least seven times now, as have my husband and my older daughter, E.  It has become a holiday tradition of sorts for the three of us to have a lovely dinner downtown and see the show.

S has never sat in the audience; instead, she has been up on the stage. For seven of the past eight years, S danced in a variety of roles. She has been a little mouse, a party girl, a toy soldier, a toy soldier on horseback, an angel, and a big mouse. Well, twice on the big mouse, and believe me, she is still disappointed about it. She has been on pointe and in ballet shoes. She has had her hair curled and her face covered with a mouse head. The one year she missed was due to an injury, and she volunteered to help with the production even when she could not perform.

The Nutcracker is a huge commitment for everyone involved. Auditions are generally held at the end of summer, and practices take place every weekend for months until that one weekend in December. There are many families way more involved and committed to the experience than mine, but we each contribute in some way to make it work.

Honestly, I love to watch the show. I love dressing up and going out and sitting in that slightly uncomfortable concert hall seat. I love when the lights dim and the musicians play. I love the grandeur, and the tradition, and I love when I see my child take the stage for roughly five minutes, knowing that she will have this special experience of realizing the reward of her hard work and dedication as well as the thrill of taking the stage with professionals from around the world for an audience of over 3,000 people.

This year, my sister, LK, joined us to watch the show. After our delicious dinner, we went to the concert hall and took our seats. We had good seats too, almost in the middle of the row, closer to the front, a great spot to see all the action. The first act went off without a hitch, and I was impressed as always by the quality of the performance.

After a twenty-minute intermission, the second act began. I love the second act because that’s when all the trippy stuff happens in the Land of Sweets. Spanish, Arabian, Chinese, and Russian dancers all perform, and the music and choreography and costumes are mesmerizing. Indeed, we were all engrossed when it happened.

Sometime during the Arabian or Chinese dances, we heard this horrible sound. It came from two rows behind us, and it was like a splash, only human. A human splash. It wasn’t a sneeze or a cough; in fact, it was so unusual a sound to hear in public that at first we didn’t know what to make of it.

About thirty seconds later, it became aromatically clear that the sound we heard was, in fact, the spew of vomit. My sister is notoriously phobic about vomit, and E is almost as bad, so the fact that the two of them were in such close proximity to someone else’s puke and powerless to flee made all three of us anxious. We had to turn around repeatedly to see if it was directly behind us. The large man seated in that row may have been targeted. He had an awkward look on his face and moved around, unsure if he should stay seated or get up and leave. We took comfort in knowing it was at least a row away.

We covered our noses with our fingers, but seriously, the smell. E, who was not in the greatest of moods, courtesy of being seventeen, decided there was no way she could sit through the rest of the show. She did that thing where she would start to stand and then sit and then sort of squat because she didn’t want to be rude, but really, it was too late for that, all the while with that look on her face that showed her contempt for other people and crowds and bodily functions. I told her to go, and so she did.

At that point, my sister took E’s seat. Apparently, the woman next to her made the mistake of putting her purse on the floor, as well as the bottoms of her shoes. LK leaned into me and we covered our faces with our collars because our fingers alone were not enough of a filter. On my other side, my husband sat and watched the show, oblivious to the panic and disgust we were experiencing. He later said he could smell it but chose to ignore it. I insist that smelling vomit is not a choice.

With E gone and LK next to me, we turned back to the show, and damn if we didn’t miss almost all of the Chinese and Russian dancing. After a bit, the smell dissipated, or we adjusted like my husband, but we were able to make it through all of act two and curtain bows.

We met up with E in the lobby. She told us that after cleaning the soles of her shoes in the restroom, she sat on a bench by herself. Soon after, an older woman sat next to her, even though all the other benches were empty. She held in her hand a large trash bag, inside of which was her vomit-covered coat. She gave E a sheepish look, and E got up and moved to another bench.

I debated asking for a refund for E’s ticket. The seats were over 55 a head, and she was too grossed out to see the entire show. I also thought for about a minute or two that they should have turned on the lights and thrown some cat litter or baking soda all over that puke, but the show, as they say, must go on. There was nothing to do but sit and watch.

After congratulating S on another successful show, we spent the drive home discussing what would cause a grown woman not to get up and leave if she felt that she was going to be sick. She certainly wasn’t a child who may not understand that nauseated feeling, but an adult? And in a formal theatre? Again, it wasn’t a heavy metal show or a football game; it was the motherfucking ballet. Have some class, people.

I wanted to have some sympathy for the woman. She didn’t set out to ruin everyone’s evening. She didn’t feel well, and for whatever reason, she wasn’t able to leave before she got sick. But then I thought about the audition and all those Saturdays of practice and the hundreds of dollars spent for everyone to watch the show, and I decided no.

You ruined more than your own night; you ruined the performance for at least two rows of people. You made me miss the Chinese dance. Perhaps you should stay home and watch it on DVD, or, at the very least, bring a discreet bag with you. Pick an aisle seat maybe. Wait and eat after the show. Go to a different show, maybe Disney on Ice. I’m sure you won’t be the only one puking there.

Up and at 'Em

I woke up this morning to one of worst sounds that can disturb slumber: retching. It was about four in the morning, which tends to be when I sleep the lightest, and even in my sleep-hazy mind, I knew the sound of puking. It was a cat, not a child, which was better than it could have been, I suppose. On the other hand, my children are old enough to know to run to the bathroom or a trashcan if the urge to vomit seizes them. The cats do not know where to aim, and so, no matter where they heave, it’s as bad a spot as any.

So I was awakened at four in the morning. I recognized the sound, and I knew it was coming from somewhere in my bedroom. I had a couple of options. I could jump out of the bed, grab the heaving animal, and throw it in the tub or the hardwoods in the hallway, or I could turn on the lights and scare it enough to spew. I knew my husband would be even less pleased than I to wake up to the combination of cat puke and sudden overhead lighting. Plus, he is still upset the cats aren’t dogs.

I also knew that the longer I waited to make a decision, the less likely I would need to.  Also, the longer the heaving continued, the less familiar it sounded. I sat up and looked around the floor, but couldn’t see a dark figure hunched over on the floor in my line of vision. The damn cat was hiding under something.

I knew it wasn’t the usual puker. Every family has one member who is the puker, and in my house, it’s my cat, Yoko. She is almost all black and has long hair, not Persian long, but long enough to clog the drain that is her cat throat about once a month. I buy this disgusting smelling paste from the vet called Laxatone which is supposed to help her pass her hair balls, but she hates it even more than I do. There is blood loss every time I attempt to use it, and so I tend to conveniently forget until, say, she hacks up a hairball. She’s nine, so that makes roughly 108 hairball vomit episodes I’ve had to clean up over the course of her lifetime. It seems a small price to pay for the pleasure of her company.

The other cat, Moshe, is a short haired tuxedo with a vacant stare and a surprisingly docile personality. He also has the ability to eat like a billy goat and not throw up often, which adds to his overall charm. I don’t mean the eating part, because that’s annoying as shit, but generally speaking, he keeps down whatever he ingests. I was surprised to wake up to the sound of him heaving since, really, it is never him. Even when he gags he manages to keep it down. He would make a terrible bulimic.

What really sucks is that I totally understood why he was puking. Moshe has a serious problem with Christmas. While Yoko is content to sleep on the tree skirt in a modern Normal Rockwell kind of way, Moshe prefers to eat Christmas. He chews on the light cords. He eats ribbons off of presents. He snacks on fragrant potpourri. And he feasts on his favorite, ornaments.

Moshe has developed a rather strong fondness for ornaments. He likes the glittery thread from which they dangle. He is a fan of the soft batting filled Santas and snowmen. He especially likes sequins and beads, and he will even chew a bit on the wire hooks we use to hang the decorations. He has also discovered that the stronger branches on the lower part of the tree work well as a ladder to work his way higher up to the more delicate and special ornaments that we have learned to hang out of his reach. I kid you not; he has actually made a series of steps out of the branches, kind of like a spiral staircase. And at fifteen pounds, he is not able to nimbly float up the tree; I am fully expecting to find the whole thing on its side one morning because of him.

This year, he also discovered the hand crocheted garland that my older daughter made a few years ago. He has already chewed it into several pieces, which look lovely hanging around the tree, like clumps of intestine. He had to work hard at it, so there are many cat saliva thickened spots which add a special touch that says homemade. I doubt my daughter even remembers how to crochet anymore, so it’s not like she is going to make another one any time soon.

After some midnight snacking on the holiday décor, Moshe clearly needed some Pepto. And so instead of drinking a bunch of water and sitting up for a few hours, he heaved and hunched and puked on my bedroom floor, before I could find him. While everyone else was waking up to the sound of their alarms or the smell of breakfast cooking, I was on my knees in the dark with the Woolite pet stain remover and a wad of paper towels, crawling under the bed and looking under the chaise lounges until I found the three, yes, three places where he succeeded in clearing his digestive system.

Here’s my question: what do dogs do for Christmas? Do they eat ornaments off the tree? Do they try to climb it and knock it over? Do they find the cranberry cheesecake cooling on the counter and take delicate nibbles off the top? The truth is, I am a little scared there is going to be a puppy on Christmas morning, and I just need to know what I am in for. At least the presence of a puppy would scare the cats away from the tree and all its many delicacies.

I am going to add carpet cleaning to my Christmas list.