Bright stars shine quietly

When I was five, I learned I’d missed out on a major opportunity.

“Your teacher told me she thought about picking you to be a Sugar Plum Fairy,” my mom informed me on the way home from a parent-teacher conference, ”but she thought you were too shy.”

I was gutted.

That winter my elementary school had put on a massive production of The Nutcracker.

Every grade was involved. There was fire, belly dancing, real swords. Or at least there were in the psychedelic recollection of my five-year-old self.

One prop I can recall with certainty is the Christmas tree. A large, glittering evergreen topped with a prismatic star that twinkled and gleamed throughout the auditorium.

If my unreliable memory serves correct, it was the task of the Sugar Plum Fairies to make sure the tree kept aglow.

During the iconic scene the little fairies, played by girls from the lower grades, twirled and leapt across the stage, each giving the tree a dainty tap before floating stage right, enchanting it with just the right amount of sugar and spice to keep the magic going.

It was a simple role. No speaking. No complex choreography.

It was pure improvisation that required nothing more than cuteness and imagination and I was more than qualified.

In fact, if my fickle reminiscence is precise, it was only a few weeks before curtain time that one of our class fairies, Leila, had to be replaced due to, air quotes, “behavioral issues.”

Leila wound up being replaced by our classmate, Carmen, a girl with a blank expression whose twirl game was weak.

Whose crayons did you have to sharpen to get a part around here?

I was a quiet kid but what was it about me that made my teacher think I wasn’t fit for the tutu?

I colored within the lines. I always made it through nap time without incident. I could even spell the word “mother” without any help. Clearly I could take direction. None of that mattered because I was seen as shy.

My teacher probably didn’t think twice about plucking loud-mouthed Leila from the playground because, much like the political stage and conference rooms of the adult world, it’s not the most thoughtful or conscientious person that gets time and attention but the noisiest.

My teacher never even asked if I wanted to be part of the play; she wouldn’t have had to.

All she had to ask was, “Do you want to play fairy princess dress up?” to which I would’ve said, “Fuck yeah!” and it would’ve been a whole other parent-teacher conference.

Who knows what could’ve happened if I’d been given a chance to wield the magic star wand? I might have leapt higher, twirled harder and tapped daintier than any Sugar Plum Fairy that Grandview Elementary school had ever seen.

Maybe it would’ve been my quiet magic that kept the tree shining on, long past the new year.