Remember Billy Elliot?
The movie came out in 2000 (I'm getting old!)
and is still one of my favorites.
~
It was so touching to see Billy's father's struggle
with his son's passion
("lads do football, or boxing, or wrestling...not ballet!").
~
And I loved that final scene with Billy performing
the lead in Matthew Bourne’s
Swan Lake (all male dancers) and his father
sitting in the audience, moved to tears.
Who could have known that we would
have our own Billy Elliot 13 years later?!
My husband and two oldest sons are basketball players.
The boys started playing when they were four and
basketball still is their deepest passion.
When they were young, I spent most of my weekends watching their games.
When our daughter came into our lives,
it was obvious from the beginning that she
wasn't interested in basketball.
She started dancing when she was four
and she still does. Our girl has found her passion.
But then this little boy became part of our family.
As soon as the boys heard the baby was a boy,
they bought this super cute baby
basketball outfit on Ebay and they paid for it with
their own money (how sweet was that!).
Another boy....a BLACK boy....there was
no doubt in their minds that he was going
to be a basketball player.
They even told his birth parents when
we met them a couple of days after the
official adoption.
The photo above, where he is wearing his
cute outfit, was taken right after we picked him
up at the children's home.
Back home I sometimes found photos like the one
above on my camera (son no. 2 is a huge Kobe Bryant
fan - they even talked about calling him Kobe!).
But the impossible happened...little Kobe
(no, we didn't really call him Kobe .-))) wasn't
interested in basketball, not even in soccer,
or volleyball, or handball...
He saw his sister dancing all the time and he
wanted to go to dance class too.
The men in the house were shocked at first
and they believed this phase would pass,
but it didn't.
So, to make a long story short...
after a lot of discussion and consideration,
he started dance lessons in september.
He does jazz and classical ballet
and yes, he is the only boy.
He is surrounded by little white girls in
pink tutus and it looks kind of funny, but
he really loves it.
Isn't life all about passion,
about doing what you love to do?
