( continues...) And she loves it. In a completely different way than loving the ballet class, but still. She practices at home. She shows stuff they've learned to us parents, and to PiBoy, asking him to attack her just-like-the-way-they-did-in-class, and she is annoyed when he finds ways to not be won by what she does.
She was floating on metaphorical clouds when the teacher (instructor? See how I didn't even stop with my broken English here and just went with a word, but then had to still show that I wasn't sure it's the right one?) announced there's an "open lesson" in which parents could attend. She wanted to share it with us.
She's still far from the "boys are icky" age (PiBoy is pretty near that age by now. I, thankfully, only know that from how some of his friends refuse to play with girls, but still), but she's totally aware of there-are-differences-between-boys-and-girls. The class of her age-group is mostly boys, and she notices it. The other kids she knows from her group are boys, but there are a couple of girls beside her in the group.
Because they're such little kids and the group is quite large, there are two teachers, and not just one. Pi+Girl is thrilled that one of them is a young woman. The other one, as the DH noticed, constantly smiles. I said that he has to, because he totally looks like he could kill any single one of us parents with his pinky, and he has to do something in order to make us trust him with our kids each week.
So I attended the class. I ran around with her, and the kids showed us some excercises and movements, and even practiced a bit with us parents as the attackers. And Pi+Girl held her hands the way I never managed to learn properly in the krav class I took in LA, and had that pure joy, that deep glee of moving and doing it right and being proud of your body and of what it can do.
And when I tucked her in her bed last night, I sat beside her, and told her what a great time I had in her class today, and how wonderful she was. And I told her about my friend, who was a krav teacher herself, and was very good at it and loved it very much. And I told her I got to be in a krav class before, when I visited my friend in the USA.
But I couldn't tell my krav-teacher-from-LA friend about the not-yet-six-years-old girl who likes her pink ballet outfit and her black-and-white krav outfit, with the little stickers they put on the belt to show that she's learned a few moves. I couldn't tell her about the joy a little girl is discovering she finds in setting a goal and working to achieve it, about the delight in moving and doing it right. About the "How on earth did that happen?" realization of a little girl becoming more of a person of her own, with her own preferences and determinations and making efforts towards fulfilling these wishes.
I couldn't tell my krav-teacher friend. I think she'd like hearng about these things. But I can't tell her. So I'm telling the friends who'll understand. I'm telling you.