Speaking Of Spring

Even though it hits 80 - 85 degrees every afternoon since I've been here, I can tell it's spring because new flowers are blooming, the birds are chirping earlier in the morning and the chocolate Easter bunnies have hit the stores.

Where I grew up, spring came after a long, long winter (sometimes not until May) and when it did come, we felt we really earned it!

But all these flowers remind me of Opening Night in an ice show.

In my first ice show, I hinted (okay demanded) that my mom send me a bouquet of flowers for Opening Night, because everyone got them. That wasn't exactly true, but I was sure excited to see the bouquet.

That was the first and last bouquet my mom ever sent to a show - and I did thirteen of them.

In my ninth or tenth show - it is hard to keep track sometimes - I was the only girl in the dressing room of twenty-eight or so that didn't get a bouquet of flowers for Opening Night. I wasn't sad so much as embarrassed.

When my girlfriend and I were joking about it later that night at the dive bar her brother worked in (free drinks from a dive bar are better than no free drinks)one of the bartenders heard us, slipped out back and came back five minutes later with an impromptu bouquet courtesy of someone's backyard.

It was such a nice gesture, although as someone now trying to grow flowers in her own backyard I would be $#%%^@## if they had been taken from me.

But when he handed them to me (with dirt still on the stems) the best feeling I got was that I didn't need them. Skating was my job by then and the flowers were for the time I was new to ice shows.

Okay, fifteen years later, I'm alarmed today at the frequency and size of the "must-give" bouquet to all the students in my daughter's dance recitals. Do they do this for skating competitions? Ice Mom, what's the word? Maybe we can start implying to our kids that the flowers are for the first time and after each concert or competition, the best gift is the performance itself.

What do you think?