Moms to Reel Boys

The days leading up to a feis can be stressful. There is a lot of preparation and planning that goes into getting ready to compete on feis day.

In my house, my Irish dancing son is preparing. He is practicing like crazy- stretching, running through steps, working on stamina, and doing drills. The rhythmic percussion of feet on floors and the Irish dance music playing from speakers are norms in most houses with Irish dancers, but getting ready for competitions can up the volume. Our house is no different. You can often walk past my house and hear the music even from the sidewalk. I wonder if one can see the walls shake a bit as he practices his hard-shoe steps.

Along with what my son is doing on his end of things, I also am busy on my end. Costumes need regular upkeep. I am Making sure things are pressed and hung up, checking the length of the ever-shrinking, black, dress pants on the ever-growing boy, re-attaching errant crystals on the vest and tie, and making sure there is a matched pair of black trouser socks- and a spare at the ready. Along with costume responsibilities, I also print out stage schedules and maps to the feis venue and make sure hubby/Dad polishes the shoes and places them in the back of the car on newspaper and gasses up the car. One of the big things on my feis "to-do list" is to pack and check the feis bag.

You just never know what's going to prompt a great discussion.

On a day this last spring, a great disussion was started with an interesting comment on Facebook by a mom from Wisconsin. Kristina is a mom to a twelve year old Irish dancing boy who dances with the Trinity School. She posted this comment:

"You know your son is an Irish dancer when... he spends an entire Saturday at a high school doing Irish dance shows and playing soccer in the hall between shows with the other boys. Then, when the janitors tell the boys to not play in the hallway, they move backstage and play "Hangman" – with the names of traditional and non-trad set dances. :-)"