I think every girl and boy goes through a phase when they want to solve a mystery
or at least become involved in a big adventure...something bigger than
themselves...
When my 9-year-old daughter, Maura, watched the Riverdance tape my brother
Bob gave her for Christmas in 1998, she wanted to do that too. She had to do
that. So goodbye ballet and tap and hello Irish dance.
We had to drive almost 100 miles roundtrip to Irish dance classes in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. The classes were usually 1 ½ hours long and sometimes held 3 times a
week during St. Patrick’s Day preparations and rehearsals for the huge Milwaukee
Irish Fest held in August every year. I would wait for her and proof legal briefs for
my attorney husband and I would kind of nose around watching how parents and
parents and dancers and dancers and teachers and parents and teachers and
dancers interacted with each other.
Some of the girls Maura’s age would bring along their Nancy Drew books to read
during breaks and I would sit there brooding that I could not get Maura, or my
other daughter, Rebecca, to read any Nancy Drew books. They tried—at least
they said they tried ...but ultimately concluded that Nancy Drew was boring. So I
reacted like a 2-year-old for awhile and begged them to keep on trying because I
desperately wanted to relive my own Nancy Drew days through them.
I think every boy and girl goes through a phase when they want to solve a mystery,
or at least become involved in a big adventure. But mostly they just want
SOMETHING TO HAPPEN---something that is bigger than they are. Something
more interesting. Enter the exciting world of the girl detective. These girls gather
all the clues, tail the bad guys and figure out the mystery before any one else
catches on.
After the first year of Irish dance lessons, we began going to feiseanna, Irish
dance competitions. I thought they were exciting places. Intrigue was every
where: wild eyed mothers, judges who were not allowed to smile or greet anyone
as they walked around like robots, nervous dancers running frantically from stage
to stage, and so on. I began to develop a 13-year-old’s brain again and noticed
how some of the dancers were totally invisible to the others, basically ignored, and
how some of the little diva types walked around like they were better than
everyone else. But most dreadfully, there was the RESULTS BOARD, the place
where dancers had to look at how it had all turned out for them, like a big front
page headline in a newspaper for all to see.
I slowly began to see possibilities beyond the actual dancing part of going to
feiseanna: SOLVING MYSTERIES AT THEM!! Liffey Rivers would be an Irish
Dancer-Girl Detective and she would be amazing. Someone for dancers to think
about other than themselves. Liffey would suffer through the dancing part just like
they did, desperate for her first solo dress, and then greedily want even more
success. But most importantly, Liffey would find adventure.
Something bigger than a feis medal!
