Photo Challenge Combo - Favorite Photo of Me, Old, Childhood Memory

Actually I'm sharing a childhood memory with a favorite old photo of me...... and my sister.

That's me on the left and my sister Andrea.  I was the oldest in the family (the oldest of 5, 3 girls and 2 boys).  Andrea was born 11 months and 20 days after me.  She was early and I was huge. I wanted to take dancing lessons and even though it was a bit of a financial stretch for my parents, they made it possible.  Of course, my sister wanted to do everything that I did which is why you see two ducks here.  Karen, my other sister was too young for lessons at the time.  But she joined us the next year.

Yes, we were ducks.  And the song we did our tap routine to at the end-of-year recital was called "A Wiggle and a Waddle and a Quack, Quack, Quack".  

Our hour-long lesson consisted of 1/2 hour of ballet and 1/2 hour of tap.  I loved those lessons.  My mother would sit on the benches that lined the dance studio along with the other mothers with their notebooks writing down the names of the steps so we could practice at home.  

The barre was on the back wall and the front wall was full-length mirrors.  Above the mirrors were framed pictures of our teacher Miss Anne in her younger days.  She had danced on Broadway with James Cagney at one point in her career.  

I took dancing lessons until I was 16 and probably would have continued if our teacher hadn't retired at that time due to a health issue we found out later was breast cancer.  My parents struggled with the expense for all those years but somehow always came up with the money for the lessons and for the recital costumes.  I'm very grateful for the sacrifices they made.

Someday I may share a story about dancing for the soldiers at Fort Dix, but for now I will "shuffle off to buffalo".