Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Thursday, December 6, 2007

On Monday, I donned my “soccer mom” hat to cart four 10-year-old boys to see “The Nutcracker” in Winston-Salem. This is not the way I usually spend weekday workdays, but nothing has been “usual” about the way I live at the moment. Right now, Henry and I are living with my mother again, as my new home in Mount Airy is undergoing a green renovation. Right now, we’re hard at work completing production for season #4 of our Simple Living television series and end-of-the-year tasks that every business faces. So when the sheet came home from Henry’s school in Mount Airy asking for volunteers to drive children to the ballet forty minutes down the road in Winston-Salem, it was easy to reference the perpetually long, undone, to-do list. This time, I brushed aside that list and signed up—no matter if the many urgent tasks at hand would have to go begging.

It wasn’t hard for me to jump on board this magic carpet ride as I have a special attachment to the famous ballet. Back in 1998, I co-authored a book called “Christmas on Jane Street” with a man named Billy Romp. The book is based on a true story involving Billly and his family who live in Vermont eleven months of the year and spend the month from Thanksgiving to Christmas living in a camper selling Christmas trees on the corner of Jane Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City. The narrative thrust of the book involves conflict between Billy and his eldest child, Ellie, who was then a 10-year-old pre-adolescent girl whose dream was to break with his austere, simple-living, tree-selling regimen and attend “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center.

Realizing that my 10 1/2-year-old son, like the Ellie of a decade ago, is now showing the early warning signs of pre-adolescence, I saw that this was a moment to be seized.

As soon as we loaded the car, Henry’s friend Wesley whipped out his DS, but I laid down the law. “No DSes,” I said, “during this magical interlude.” The children had to resort to other forms of engagement. They pulled out books, brochures and catalogs from the seatholders and laughed and kidded about them; they actually looked out the windows at the trees and sky and speculated whether it would snow this Christmas.

Set to Tchaikovksy’s score, “The Nutcracker” at the Stevens Center in downtown Winston and danced by students at the North Carolina School of the Arts—now in its 42nd year—was magical from the moment the first ballerina’s toe met the floor. The inventive costumes, lavish sets, and breathtaking music performed live by the the Winston-Salem Symphony with Robert Moody conducting proved to be the needed antidote to our DS, Gameboy, chatroom era.

On the way back, the boys and I all played Twenty Questions. (For a few in the car, they were learning the game for the first time.) For me, it had been more than a few years since I played.

When I stepped back into my office in Mount Airy—my mind still awhirl, my imagination refreshed—the to-do list was still waiting, but somehow, its urgency lessened, my mood lightened.