>My Mommy Can High-Kick Your Mommy’s Ass

>Watch out, mommybloggers, there may be some new competition invading our turf:

Rockette Mommy.

I got a chance to sit down with Corrinna Lindholm several days ago for this week’s Nashville Scene column. She’s a Radio City Rockette, in town for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular currently playing here in Nashville. She’s also mother to a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy and she’s brought both of them with her from Chicago for the show’s two-month rehearsal and run.

And I thought my life was difficult.

Corrinna has been a Rockette for ten years now, so chances are she’ll be throwing in the maribou soon. We talked for a while about how scary it can be to lose your career identity when making the decision to stay at home with the kids, particularly when the career is high-profile, like TV reporter or Rockette. I asked her what she wanted to do next.

“Actually, I’d like to try writing,” she said. “Sort of like what you’re doing. How did you end up with your job?”

And another potential mommyblogger was born. I gave her my web address, along with the URLs of some of my other favorite mommybloggers and encouraged her to start posting.

“If it’s good, people will read it,” I said. “And they’ll come back. And I think you’ve already got a good head start on the competition, since you’d be the only Rockette Mommyblogger out there.”

I’m just saying… If Rockette Mommy starts showing up all over Internetland, you heard it here first. You can read more about the ups and downs of life as a Rockette Mommy in this week’s edition of the Nashville Scene. The full text of the column is below.

High-Kick Mommy

Legs, Legs, Legs!

That’s what I’ve renamed the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, now playing at the Grand Ole Opry House through December 31st. Sure, the show features a singing Santa, dancing bears, a disturbingly chipper chorus of singers and a live nativity scene, but let’s be honest. The ticket holders show up to see legs, specifically those belonging to the world-famous Rockettes, and nowhere is this more evident than in a scene that introduces the Rockettes legs-first, dancing behind a screen that covers their upper bodies. At the sight of all those perfectly toned gams, the audience gasps with delight and spontaneously bursts into applause.

I settle back in my seat, enviously imagining the lives those legs and their owners surely lead. I’ll bet the Rockettes prancing before me wake up late every morning in large hotel suites filled with flowers from admirers. Emerging swan-like from their beds, they run bubble baths topped with rose petals and admire their flawless complexions in the mirror before taking muscle-relaxing soaks and wondering which up-and-coming country music stars will squire them around town after the evening’s performance.

Is it wrong that I get a little bit of pleasure out of knowing that at least one of them is getting up at the crack of dawn, sore and exhausted and mentally steeling herself to feed, bathe, clothe and entertain her two small children before arriving at the Opry House and dancing through up to three performances a day? Now, that’s my kind of Rockette.

Her name is Corrinna Lindholm and she’s a Chicago native who’s brought her Air Force pilot husband and kids (ages 4 and 2) with her to Nashville this year to appear in her tenth season of the Christmas Spectacular. Lindholm is one of a growing number of Rockette mommies, quelling the notion that all of Radio City’s finest are impossibly young, virginal beauty queens who also happen to have mad dancing skills.

On stage, Lindholm’s extra child-chasing workouts show. She’s one of the skinniest dancers on the line, the bones of her chest and back plainly visible above the neckline of her sequined costumes. But at times, motherhood has given her the kind of curves that would’ve shocked Rockettes founder Russell Markert when he debuted his kick line back in 1925.

“I was close to five months pregnant when the Christmas show closed,” Corrinna tells me before a recent performance. “Both pregnancies.” She laughs wryly. “It’s not something I’d recommend.”

Me neither. When I was five months pregnant, I spent much of my time on the sofa, eating Ben and Jerry’s and complaining about my sciatica. If Lindholm isn’t careful, she’s going to ruin the whole pregnant-woman-is-an-invalid-who-must-be-pampered myth for all of us. Quickly, I change the subject.

“I guess your kids think having a Rockette for a mom is awesome.”

“They really like it,” she agrees. “They perform scenes from the show when they play together. And my daughter will bring it up at preschool: ‘My mommy’s a Rockette.”

Personally, I can only hope that her daughter will one day follow up that statement with, “And she can high-kick your mommy’s butt.” Because after watching Lindholm effortlessly hoof her way through eight costume changes and two hours of dance routines that would leave even an advanced Jazzercise instructor gasping for EMS, I have no doubt that she could indeed kick ass at any given PTA meeting if the need arose. With this in mind, I ask if she’s dealing yet with any disses from the minivan mommy squad.

“I think when people find out what I do, they get freaked out at first,” she says, adding that once moms actually get to know her, they’re usually very nice. Not counting the time she showed up at her daughter’s preschool in full make-up after a Rockettes public appearance.

“Are those false eyelashes?” she says, referring to the kinds of looks she got from the other moms. “What exactly do you do all day?”

“It’s intimidation,” I assure her. “And there will only be more of it as the other moms get older and fatter. Trust me.” Despite her false eyelashes and dancer’s body, I’m beginning to forget Lindholm is a Rockette and this is an interview. We might as well be sitting at Red Caboose Park, bitching about trying to earn money while still spending quality time with the kids. Which brings me to an obvious question.

“How much longer can you keep this up?” I ask. Lindholm still looks great on stage but if Rockette years are like dog years, she now qualifies for a cane and a bottle of Metamucil. She admits that she toyed with quitting after last season, at least until talking to her daughter about it.

“When I said I was thinking about not doing the show, she cried for two days,” Lindholm caved to tear pressure then, but next fall, her daughter starts kindergarten. Although she cringes at the idea of pulling her out of school for the show, another fear keeps her from making a final decision.

“I can just see some kid asking, ‘What’s your mommy do?’ And my daughter will say, ‘Nothing.”

I sigh and put down my pen and notepad. This Rockette has uncovered the cold, hard truth that all moms discover sooner or later: Motherhood, with all its joy and wonder, sometimes feels like nothing so much as a precision kick to the head.