I am not a man who cries easily. But there was a moment standing in the bleachers of the Stormont Vail Center in Topeka, face painted blue and white, ridiculous striped coveralls and all, watching my youngest daughter dance for what might be the last time with some of these girls, and I felt something I could not name. Not sadness exactly. Not just pride. Something older and more complicated than either.
Let me back up.
The drive to Topeka from Nebraska is about six hours. Easy. Flat. The kind of drive that gives you too much time to think. Crossing into Kansas I noticed hundreds of acres of scorched grass along the highway, black against the dry winter brown, a reminder that the fires hadn't stayed in Nebraska. You get wrapped in your own world and forget that other places are burning too. I filed that away.
We checked into the hotel, did a little research on the area, then drove over to the venue. I was expecting the usual chaos of a national-level event. Shuttle buses from a distant parking lot, long lines, the organized bedlam of big-time sports. Instead, I found a parking spot 100 yards from the front door. That was the first sign. Dance and cheer nationals, it turns out, is not quite a spectator sport. Twelve teams. Parents, siblings, a few scattered fans. The whole thing felt almost intimate by comparison.
Inside, wandering near the mezzanine, I struck up a conversation with a man named Zephyr. Thirties, glasses, dreads that went halfway down his back. Originally from New York. His parents had moved to Topeka a few years back, bought a house, then a few more, said they wanted something slower. Zephyr came to check it out, liked what he found, and stayed. He works as a plumber, moonlights as floor staff at the Stormont on weekends. He told me the money was fine but honestly he did it to meet interesting people. I had to wonder briefly if that was a gentle dig at how freely I'd jumped into the conversation. I don't think so. Zephyr seemed like a man who meant what he said.
I thought about him for the rest of the weekend.
Concordia Competitive Dance Team Celebration
The Concordia Bulldogs, Elise's team, performed first in the prelims. First is a tough draw at Nationals. No frame of reference, no crowd energy built up, no sense yet of the room. They went out there anyway. High energy, mostly clean, a few things to clean up. I thought it was great. The score didn't agree. 83.5. The lowest they'd posted all year. The room went a little quiet. They'd worked too hard and come too far for that number to feel like anything but a gut punch.
They watched film that night. Broke it down. Coach made notes. Then everyone went back to their hotels. It was late. I just went to bed.
Saturday morning was beautiful in the specific way that mornings are sometimes beautiful when you have no agenda yet. A cardinal sat outside my window and serenaded the day awake. I ate some oatmeal, got some writing done, watched a set of grandparents bring wrapped gifts to two little girls in pajamas at the breakfast table, maybe five and three years old, cereal and excitement and no concept of anything beyond that moment. I don't know whose birthday it was. It didn't matter. It was good to be in that room.
Elise came by for a bit before the afternoon call time. She was tired. Late night, early morning, adrenaline fallout. But she said the team had found some small things to fix from the judges' notes. She said it quietly, like someone who has learned the discipline of calm. I wanted to hold onto that moment a little longer. It passed the way those moments do.
I went downtown for a few hours, found a couple of cradled panels at a local shop, walked around Washburn's campus, let the day breathe. Then I went back, changed into the bibs, got my face painted. Two blue stripes, white in the middle. A few paw prints. Some CU's on the cheeks of some other parent and sbiling supporters. Allison did the honors. We looked absurd. We didn't care.
The girls were third or fourth to perform in the finals. Waiting in the wings, their pre-dance hype song came on. I expected something hard and driving. Instead it was a praise and worship piece. And I watched all of these college dancers, some of them a year away from the rest of their lives, get absolutely lit up by it. They prayed together. Then they hit the floor.
That's when I felt it.
E is selected for Championship Character award at NAIA Competitive Dance Nationals
You could see it in them before the first count. Something was different. Joyful, yes, but layered. A soulful kind of joy, the kind that knows something is ending and chooses to be present for it anyway. For some of these seniors, this was the last dance of a career that had started when they were five years old. Not everyone would stop here. But this particular dance, with this particular team, would never happen again. They knew it. And they danced like they knew it. Clean, connected, alive. Best performance of the weekend. Maybe best of the season.
No matter what the scores showed, they would be okay.
The scores showed eighth. Great result for a first-ever nationals appearance. The NAIA Midwest is no joke, our conference sent three teams to the dance, placing second, sixth, and eighth. Two programs in our conference have combined for eight national titles. Qualifying meant winning the conference. That they made it at all says everything about what this program is becoming.
Then they announced the Championship Character Award. Each of the twelve teams nominates one athlete. A coach and teammates choose the person who best represents what they want their program to be. Elise was Concordia's.
I am more proud of her for that than anything.
We spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures, laughing with the team, meeting parents, being reluctant to leave. Eventually everyone dispersed. We loaded up and headed north just after six. Leaving Topeka, the smoke from the wildfires was sharp in the back of the throat, stinging the eyes. The fields along the highway were black. The fires hadn't stopped for the weekend.
I drove and thought about Zephyr, who gave up New York for something slower and more human. About two little girls eating cereal in their pajamas, completely at home in the morning. About a cardinal doing his job outside a hotel window. About a team of dancers pouring out everything they had, not for a trophy, but for each other, for the moment, for something they understood was almost over.
All of this to say: doing hard things is what makes us human. Failure is what builds resolve. And the courage to show up fully, especially for the last dance, is not something that shows up on a scoreboard. It shows up in character. It shows up in the quiet things.
We must fail to really live. And we must really live while we still can.
Keep making, keep growing, be you.
Tio
Dance Team just before performing the final dance at Nationals
Smoke and the Unnamed Thing