Nutcracker memories

As someone who has been a Party Mother, Grandmother, Rat Queen, Snowflake, Snow Queen, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Mirliton, Flower, Bug (don't ask), Dewdrop, and Sugar Plum Fairy in various productions of the Nutcracker over the years, I can really identify with this quote from a December 21, 2007, article in the New York Times by Alastair Macaulay:

And so the changeover of roles goes on from one “Nutcracker” to another. Every performance is attended by ballet mothers who know more about it than anyone else in the audience. When the bed travels magically around the stage, they know there is a little boy underneath. My favorite piece of insider knowledge was uttered years ago by one such mother to another. Watching a young man making his debut as the Sugar Plum’s Cavalier, she whispered, “I remember him when he was the bed.”