Attending the Nutcracker Ballet in San Jose (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The first time I saw the
Nutcracker was with my elementary school class in Detroit, Michigan.
We went to see the Nutcracker
at the Fisher Theatre by General Motors Headquarters in midtown Detroit. All the girls in our class had bows in our
hair, lacy dresses, and wore black patent leather shoes. All the boys had vests on under their
suits.
Thanks to the auto industry,
most of our families were –middle-middle class- in Detroit, but we were still
considered disadvantaged. Many of our
parents made our clothes, so we could appear a lot richer than we were, but the
GM head honchos knew better. They made
sure we participated in the cultural wealth of the auto industry as well as the
kids in the suburbs as best they could.
We all liked the Nutcracker
and tried to recreate the music in the Nutcracker and the ballet steps in the
waiting area of the restaurant where we were going to eat – Lelli’s Banquet
Room.
We knew we were spoiled. Lelli’s was where all of Detroit’s Italian
families ate. We had been taking
etiquette lessons and were going to get a light Italian lunch after the
theatre.
This outing was a sit-down
lunch not a buffet. The waiters wore
crisply ironed, white shirts with black bowties and black pants and shoes.
We ate a bowl of minestrone
with Parmesan cheese that the waiters spooned over our bowls of soup. They told us how nicely dressed up we were.
After that, we had 3-cheese
lasagna, a salad with ranch dressing (Italians know American kids do not like
oil and vinegar dressing), and sautéed peppers.
For dessert, we had spumoni
ice cream with whipped cream. This ice
cream is a mix of pistachio, cherry, and vanilla ice cream with a maraschino
cherry in it. We had lemonade to drink. We were happy, little smiling clams.
When I married my husband
Laurent, we went to all sorts of performances of live dance, because we could
walk to the theatre from our apartment in Marina City in Chicago. We often received discounts by buying at the
last minute, which we could do, because we lived downtown.
When the Bolshoi Ballet came
to Chicago, I waited in line to pay full-price for tickets. They performed the Nutcracker. That performance made me feel like a little
kid again even though I worked at a “Big City” audit and consulting firm.
The last time I saw the
Nutcracker was with my daughter Florence in San Jose, California. I drove up to San Jose in Silicon Valley from
Monterey, California.
Very few women drive in
testosterone-pumping Silicon Valley, but I had made it through the freeways in
testosterone-pumping Norfolk, Virginia to get to the Naval Shipyards, so the
men on the road just passed me and smiled that I was in the slow lane with a
child aboard.
We attended the show in San
Jose as part of Florence’s Big Sur Charter School class trip. Florence and I had seats on the main floor.
After the show, I took
Florence out for Mexican food, so I drove around San Jose until I found a
Mexican restaurant.
The place we went to had a
mariachi band that made us feel like we had taken a trip to Baja.
Florence and I had the same
meal, which started with chicken noodle soup with lots of chicken meat chunks,
carrots, and pasta in it. Then, we had
cheese enchiladas with salsa verde, refried beans, Spanish rice, lettuce, and
California black olives on the side. For
dessert, we had a thick, creamy flan (full of calcium for strong bones) and
horchata (cinnamon-rice drink).
When I lived in Germany, my
daughter Florence bought my husband Laurent and me a 3-foot Nutcracker doll to
go with the snow weighing down the pine tree branches outside our terrace
window.
It was a sign that we had all
grown up happy and laughing.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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