Never Stop Dancing

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In high school there were two games. Basketball and sock-hops.  Oh, there was football, but I didn’t get it, and to my mind, it did not exist. I had played basketball somewhat successfully in sixth grade and perhaps because of this, I had caught basketball fever, an illness peculiar to Indiana. But no girls’ basketball teams existed.

I turned to sock-hops. But without YouTube, it was a geeky girl’s nightmare. Without any sports to my name, I believed myself to be a klutz. How could one master all the crazy dances–the Hitchhiker, the Pony, the Bunny Hop, and the queen of all the dances, the Mashed Potato?  You had to take your shoes off to protect the varnished gym floor, and at sixteen taking your shoes off was a huge commitment. You could not have smelly feet. I didn’t. Nor could you have weird socks.  I did. For some reason I adored colored knee-high socks that matched my skirts. Bizarre. I know.

I never missed a sock-hop.   After a basketball game at Southport High, I could be found with my friends in the gym in a huge circle of teenage girls. I have no recollection of the boys. I believe they would have been on the side of the gym, lurking in the bleachers. Or perhaps they were outside, shooting hoops. Of course, David would dance with us, and he knew all the dance moves. He is one of the few boys in high school that I wanted as a boyfriend. But I probably intuited he was gay and would be a safe bet. While he spread his net of joy wide, he dated only one girl, Debbie, and he broke her heart in college when he told her the truth.

But back in the gym on a Friday night, the star of the sock-hop was Tara. She was probably born with some type of dance gene that most teenagers, at least gawky ones like me, lacked. And my teenage tribe were all envious of her. First, she had those thick white socks that everyone loved because they would slide across the varnish with ease. And when she slid out of her winter white parka and onto the varnished gym floor, all eyes were on her. Her thick auburn curls gently framed her perfectly oval face with a full smile that looked like the photos that hung on my dentist’s walls. While she rarely talked, she often listened, which was part of her charm, and frequently her laughter would punctuate the air with a wonderful energy.

Throughout high school I had a very lively critic in my head. Every Friday when I entered the gym after a game, I wanted to be anywhere but there. Anywhere. I believed myself to be far more awkward than I was, and the vile voice in my head encouraged me to slip behind the bleachers and hide. Several times I dreamed I arrived at the dance barefoot and humiliated!

But within minutes of crowding into the gym this night, one of the teachers had unlocked the front office and began to spin the 45 rpms over the Intercom. The rock music blasting into the gym comforted the vile voice in my head. This evening The Larks stole the opening slot with “The Jerk,” and we all began to jump around like we knew what we were doing.

For thirty seconds I studied the fluid movements of Tara. I got it. Mostly hopping and pulling at air like we were milking a cow. We danced in a circle. Jumped. Danced with a partner. Moved across the circle. Cycled back toward the circle. Suddenly we were caught up in it. And it didn’t matter how silly my socks looked.

Then the Locomotion. I kept my eyes inadvertently glued to Tara. Arms and legs pumping up and down. Then arms pumping forward followed by swooping the arms to the floor and then the sky and finally chugging forward. Later our arms rotated like windmills to the Watusi. Afterwards, we all lined up and jumped in unison to the Bunny Hop, and we even rotated our hips around and around to Chubby Check’s Twist.  A throwback. I suspect we twisted to all the Beatles tunes as well. There were no slow dances. To this day I don’t believe boys in Southport dance.

When Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potatoes” blasted through the intercom, I could feel the sweat pouring from my body. On auto-plot I thrust my body into motion and kicked my long, lanky left leg out with the force of a torpedo. Unexpectedly, my leg crashed into Tara, and knocked her small frame down, flat on the gym floor, curls tossed in every direction. For a second time stopped.

Now I have heard a lot about mean girls. And if Tara had been one, my memory of high school could have spun into nightmares on that night.  But there are small miracles. The energy of the music propelled me to act. I reached out with both arms to help pull Tara up and to gently right her.  “Sorry,” I mouthed to her, and she smiled her toothy grin and then we both burst into laughter and the wonderful sound of it rippled across the gym, and then we were dancing together. Dancing the Mashed Potato to the correct beat and with the correct motions, our feet moving like the beaters of a mixer.

I can still remember being in the gym that night. I was so completely in that moment, and for a short time, like Tara, I, too, felt like a dancing queen. My fears had been tossed amid our collision and the pulse of the music. There was a shift in me. I think I realized how fully I loved dancing and how it can bring people together and even silence the critic in your head. For the first time, I danced with abandon. I danced with joy. I was lost to it. The wonder of it. The energy. The awe.

I learned something that I still hold onto. Love comes in moments. In surges of wonderful feelings. That evening with all the electric energy of all the girls in that gym, I discovered dance. I hope I will never stop dancing.

 

 

Believe in Possibilities

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When Zach was a toddler, probably three, he used to carry around a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When I would come home from school, we would often read about the caterpillar who ate endlessly on his way to becoming a beautiful butterfly. Perhaps I loved the book as much as Zach did.

It is hard to believe it was three decades ago that Steve and I read that book over and over to Zach—and I still remember the story. It was such a busy time of life for our family. Zach was an on-the-go youngster. Matt was seven and caught up with Legos and soccer. I was immersed in teaching high school, and Steve worked endless hours trying to launch a small business. Then we hit a bump. A hard one.

During this period of our lives, my young husband used to walk across the empty grassy fields to the east of the small home we had built near an industrial park where he had rented a small space and started a machine shop. His intention was to create his dream job, and he loved designing and building machines. His bliss.

But one morning it was far from blissful. Steve hiked across the field, and he was greeted at the shop door by Devon, his foreman whom he had known for a few years and trusted. The two always started the day with a progress meeting. Not today. Devon met Steve outside and announced to Steve that he was quitting to start his own business effective immediately. He announced without hesitation that he planned to be Steve’s biggest competitor and that he already had plenty of business lined up to make a go of it. Business, of course, that would have belonged to Steve’s shop.

Steve marched through the day in a fog, doing his best to guide the shop while carrying on with his management tasks. That evening he made his way across the grassy field to our home. In a bit of shock. As usual he was met by little Zach waving the caterpillar book up at him. And he read the story to Zach for the umpteenth time. After the kids were in bed, he explained to me how much of a nightmare this had created for him—and for us. That evening he sunk into his comfy chair. Despondent.  Still in shock. Sitting there he could not imagine what he would do. Take Devon to court? Throw in the towel on this business venture?  Go back to McDonnell Douglas?  It would be hard to go on without his lead and someone he had trusted. Someone who left with not only his shop’s business but with many of the shop’s tools. For a few days he was stuck in the muddle and the “not knowing what to do.”

I remember the following weeks all too well. It was January and dark. Oh, so dark. Bills were coming at us faster than money. I was so grateful for my teaching paycheck. Steve was working all day and often much of the night. Sometimes he failed to take his turn reading the caterpillar story to Zach, and somewhere during those days, Zach tired of this book and moved on to another. Steve rarely talked about his struggle and while his situation weighed me down, the weight must have been unbearable for him.

It was well into spring when Steve came home early from work one evening and announced we were going out to dinner. The boys chose the spot, Nello’s Pizza. What followed was a family celebration with Steve explaining he had burrowed his way forward. He told us how a company in Mesa who had one of their airbag machines “kill” a crash dummy, had asked Steve to redesign their faulty machine. When Steve’s new design worked successfully, Talley hired our little company to make similar machines. At last Steve had a clear intention and a wonderful new vision of what our little business could bring to this world. That evening over ooey-gooey-cheesy pizza, Steve explained to the boys how important it is to consider all the possibilities in life. “There are so many possibilities,” he explained.

Zach clapped, which he did often as a child. “Just like the caterpillar!” he said, and we all laughed. At the time, it seemed like Zach often interpreted the world as working like the hungry aterpillar from his beloved child’s book.

Indeed, it was sometime later, when I realized my small son’s wisdom and the power of the metaphor in the book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Like all of us, the colorful little caterpillar makes his way forward, eating his way through apples and leaves and then junk food which almost does him in. But this small, amazing creature rises up and spins his cocoon, and prepares for change. After his long struggle, and only after this journey, did the caterpillar grow into something better and far more beautiful—a butterfly. I would have to stay Steve’s little business had the same wonderful transformation.

This is what I wish for all of us. The ability to take all of our hardships, all of the unexpected ups and downs that come to all of us, and to grow from them. To change and to find ourselves better for it.

Happy New Year. May 2024 be your best year yet.

Small, Treasured Gifts

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My house is twinkling with Christmas lights a bit early. In truth—I needed light. Here is why. A few days ago, I awoke with tears in my eyes—I seem to cry in my sleep when I am profoundly sad. Of course, the world news has been flooded with images of war, children injured and torn from their homes.

On top of that, I had just finished reading a book gripped in the clutches of war. One that made me aware I was engulfed in war sadness.  After a few decades, I decided to reread the story of Anne Frank. To my surprise I found the definitive edition of The Diary of a Young Girl to be far more powerful than the original story I read in junior high. Many unexpected stories are woven into this version—Anne’s struggles with her mother, her discovery of sex. On these pages I found a girl at thirteen trapped by her circumstances, but a girl who remains caught up in her curiosity and finds great wonder in living. Despite hiding from the Nazis in an annex with her family, Anne manages to grow up anyway and works hard to unearth the insights and wisdom she can capture. I loved that about her.

When Anne faced a second Christmas hidden with her family in the annex, she realized they had no way of buying presents. Being determined to find gifts, she decided to do what she did best—create an individual poem for each person. Her father helped her pull off her surprise, and the poems, received with joy, were small but treasured gifts.

While I love to shower friends with books as presents, I rarely think to give them a poem—and I rarely write poems. For years I suffered from a fear of poetry, oddly called metrophobia. I was certain I didn’t get poems. But slowly poems wove a path into my life. Mark Nepo says “poems are an unexpected utterance of the soul.”  Indeed. Some poems knock you over with beauty or simply change you. How wonderful Anne understood this at her young age.

How wonderful that last week, I received a poem in my inbox.  In class, Karen Raskin-Young had told me, “My son called me a poet and storyteller as if that were a bad thing. I have come to realize that we are all made of stories–and maybe that can be a wonderful thing.” Karen is writing to find out. Here is her poem–

Wisdom Tree

We think it’s the peak,

The lofty top of the tree.

We think, when we get there,

We’ll have everything we need.

We think wisdom shouts from the rooftops,

But we’re wrong.

Wisdom grows

Quietly,

In the roots,

Soaking up

Nourishment,

Digging deeper,

Getting dark

And rich.

Whispering.

Shared with permission of the author. ©Karen Raskin-Young

Soon after receiving this poem, we shared it in my Storycatcher’s class. As Karen read it to us, awe floated across the room. Poems can work that kind of magic.  Like reading Anne Frank again, Karen’s words reminded me that we are always on the search for what life can teach us, and it is often a deep, dark search. It may even pull you down into the depths of sadness.  But eventually we see the glimmers—the hope, the insights, the beauty—and even the wisdom. I love that.

In hindsight I see Anne’s story is one of overcoming in the worst of circumstances. It’s true her family is betrayed and that she dies in a camp weeks before the liberation, but it is also true that she was strong and found her voice, an uplifting voice, and an undying resilience that she bequeathed to millions of us in a diary she steadfastly wrote for us.

Gifts can be small—a drawing, a book, or even a poem. But if they are given from the heart, and if they are wrapped with meaning, or hope, or love, they can be the most treasured gifts. Special thanks to Karen and Anne for their thoughtful words.