Megan is a dancer

I have seen her as brave. Her little frame played like a bowling pin, toppled over amongst the moving scrum of lanky elbows and blackened soles. She usually remains man down, all tears and quivering lip on the floor, until her mother scoops her up from the scene and rocks her to the melody of Tula Sana. It's a man's world for you in this house, my girl. And then she goes back again... and again and again... to face the rising tide of testosterone. "My car!", "my gun!", "my (insert Tristen's current toy of choice). But today she was a dancer.

For a moment the muddied fists that push against her in this big boy-world-of-Megs lost their punch. The world froze for a moment. And all that remained was a little girl in first position and the sounds of Swan Lake in her ears. She watched me with utter amazement as I guided her through the five positions of ballet. The air felt soft and sacred. I made my 20-years-out-of-practice movements slowly and fearfully, aware that any sudden jerk might scatter this moment into a thousand pieces. We quietly placed Ouma's electric yellow tutu around her chubby waist. For months it had lived at the back of the cupboard, where other 'oh-please-Meggie-wear-it-for-Mommy' items had gone to die. But today she stood still, as Aunty Lee wrapped the ribbon around her thumb and pulled. Juice trails and satin bow tails streaming down her backside, she began to sway her little hips to the music. Her grubby fat fingernails kissed one another above a mop of messy hair. She wanted to close her eyes. But she needed to watch her mother - and she needed to see her mother watching her. So she watched her world rock from side to side through fluttered eyelids. It must have been all of five minutes where the world went still and my heart overheated from sugar and spice and everything nice. Then the dissonance of dirt and noise and clashing swords descended upon our symphony and our ballet was bulldozed by hip hop and Kung fu. Our ballerina did her best to dance through the cloud of chaos. And I suppose the boys did their best to tell their bodies to calm down. But soon the air felt like sandpaper. The stage curtain came down and I let the gratitude fall off my tongue with big words and raucous applause. My little girl was was not just beautiful in that moment; she defined beauty.

The beehive of boys moved on, and so did Meggie in their slipstream. She was probably vying for the Ironman mask before Tristen could get his hands on it. I watched her pound the passageway with fists clenched, forehead leading the way, and disappear into the noise. Her yellow tutu bounced against her bum- all gauze and satin and speckles of gold. And I decided, as my dancing beauty turned the corner, that she must be the coolest thing alive.