It’s old.

Dating back to 1938

and it has such a history.

It was my Grandmother’s first

and then my mother’s

and I remember

spending many an afternoon

closed up in my cupboard,

with pillows and a toy or two

just flicking through its pages.

There are some signatures from family.

Relatives long gone.

Their writing in the twirly, twisty scrawl of the 1930s set

and there are some from the 1950s school era -

quirky little poems of friendship

etched onto the pages,

a friendship wall of fame

and then

there are the others.

The autographs that kept me coming back time and time again over the years.

Imprinted into my child like mind

almost like my own memories.

I would look at them,

rub my fingers across their print

and imagine my mother in swirling organza and pink silk,

light and free and

happy.

My mother was a ballerina.

At eight she walked across the floor of her classroom on full pointe

in soft ballet slippers.

She was graceful and

and determined.

She would tell me this story often

when I was a girl.

One Christmas she was invited to be a payed professional dancer in the ballet of Sleeping Beauty.

She was so excited.

She was to be a rat.

One of the rats, who pulled the evil fairy onto the stage.

A small role

but so exciting for a girl, who had not yet found puberty.

I would lie in bed and imagine

her running from her school playground,

uniform amiss,

one sock up,

the other falling around her ankle.

Stray hair escaping, her tight, neat plaits.

I would listen as she told me tales of train rides into the city,

arriving hours too early

and the thick grey grease paint used as make up,

that left the little rats feeling heavy and hot.

By far the most magical part

was when she would tell me about

interval

and how she and her rat mates

would scurry onto the stage and collect the sequins from the tutus

that had fallen between the boards,

glistening in the bright lights of the theatre.

She would open up the book and there, between the old pages

were the tiny diamontes

and next to them

the signatures of the ballerinas.

Young then

but by the time I was in ballet class myself

the leading soloists of the Australian ballet.

I would hold that little book close to my heart

and know that my mother

was amazing.

Better than that

was the way her face lit up,

the way her eyes danced,

whenever she told me that story.

It was as though she was still there, dancing

losing herself.

The story stops short there.

Her teacher, knowing her potential

spoke to my grandmother of scholarship

and learning the art in Russia.

My Grandmother,

who was by then a single mother of three

having recently divorced from her American war beau

during the period of the Cold War

did what she thought was best

and pulled my mother from ballet.

For good.

The autograph book sat amongst her treasures

and saw her through

high school,

piano lessons,

moving into the work place,

marriage

and setting up house.

It was the one thing from her childhood that she kept, along with a doll and an old, German teddy bear

and it stayed hidden in the little wooden box that harboured her dreams and her disappointments

until I came along

and she opened her heart up to me,

her little,

too round

daughter

who just wanted to dance.

I loved it as a child

and when my parents divorced, I thought it lost

or thrown away.

I imagined it discarded,

along with everything else that had been too hard to take with her

into her new life.

She brought the little autograph book over to my home the other day.

“It’s yours now”, she said

and handed it to me,

her hands shaking just a little.

It smelled exactly as I remembered it,

it was older, more worn

but inside the memories were exactly the same

and as I turned the old, browned papers

she started to tell me the story again

but it meant so much more this time   -

both of our childhoods intertwined,

our memories coming together

over the old autograph book

and a cup of tea.

She’ll always be that ballerina to me.