I Gotta Get This Show

Curly would have been labeled as a "dangerous jumper" because he did not bring both knees up together to go over the jump. I have never had more fun jumping, though, or felt safer than when I was riding him. Texas 1990

Jon loved seeing himself in the viewer screen on the back of my camera. I got this one of him, looking at us, reflected together in the mirror backing a Chinese ceramics display in the Smithsonian. Maryland 2010

Brent and Nate and I went on a road trip to Fort Lauderdale. The art museum was a WAY BIG disappointment, but at a museum collection of old Packard cars, there was more to see. Florida 2010

I did this one while trying to get ideas for a "self portrait that you didn't look like yourself in it" assignment for a black and white photography class I took at PBSC. Florida 2009

This is one of the first shots I ever took of myself in my kitchen window. After dark it is as sharply reflective as a mirror. I was wearing my favorite shirt. Florida 2008

This is a photograph, also a reflection in the kitchen window, that I took and think of as my "50th Year Old Portrait." Florida 2009

"Kiss today goodbye and point me towards tomorrow . . ."

"Every Little Step" is an old film, a retrospective (their word) on the casting process in preparation for the revival of A Chorus Line. It is a slap in my face that yells at me that I never could have done what those people did. I didn't start dancing soon enough or seriously enough. I didn't. I was too chunky as a teenager. I was. I would have killed myself had I broken through the constraints of my father's advice and lost myself in the mirror that frees and contains a dancer. I am preoccupied now with my own reflection.

Our kitchen window looks out over the sink onto the lanai and, at night, reflects my own face back at me--but softly. I have taken dozens--maybe hundreds--of photographs of myself looking back at myself. Perhaps it is the dearth of ("women's tears"--"dearth of women's tears" is a line from a war poem I studied at BYU) images from all the years when the children were growing up. Perhaps thousands of photographs--the majority of them thrown out or lost or ruined in the flood--I took. An acquaintance once said that she took so many pictures of her kids growing up so that when she got old and got Alzheimer's, she'd still be able to look back and know that she had lived a life full of people and places--even if she didn't remember that she had been there or was related to the faces in the photographs.

Nikki from Fleetwood Mac put photographs of herself posing in toe shoes and ballet costumes on the covers of her record albums (back when there were photo albums) and anyone who ever danced could tell that she's never had any real experience as a ballerina or even tried to stand "en pointe." I had. I had worn and bled into real toe shoes. Though I never got paid for dancing, after class one day, I was told by a fellow dance student at BYU: "It's beautiful to see you. I love watching you dance."

And that has always been enough for me. I am a dancer.

But I am not a professional dancer. Actually I'm not a professional anything. After finishing my Masters, I did get to teach a few semesters of college English and worked as a Legal Assistant while Brent was in law school. I have played organ and piano and sung and played flute. I have written hundreds of pages of prose--and half again as much in essay response and/or literary analysis. If I lived by "Publish or Perish," I'd be long gone and buried. My mom loved my letters and Megan is doing amazing artwork to accompany a children's narrative that I composed.

Seeing anything about the theatre always makes me feel morose and begin to self-assess based on my teenage need to face myself by losing myself in the character of a play. I got lots of chances to do that. There was little competition from others 15-to-20-year-olds who could not exist without a ready-made façade to hide behind. Desperation breeds excellence.

Especially in front of a full-length mirror.

Am I depressed tonight? No. I am just upset that I did not have the chance to ruin my body sooner in a more dramatic way. At the end of "Every Little Step," one of the actresses who got a major part was the daughter of a ballet dancer. He danced for 20 years and then blew out a knee. He thought that he was finished as a dancer--and then Baryshnikov called him and told him to get back to the theatre. In six weeks he was dancing again. At the end of the evening's performance, his dance slipper was full of blood.

But he ended his comments by telling the viewers to ask any dancer, any gymnast who participated in the Olympics--would they give up the ruined shoulders, damaged ankles, arthritic knees?

It was worth it. What ever was lost--it was worth it.

And really . . . I feel the same way about all the injuries I sustained from my horseback riding time. And even now after surgery on my left knee, I hate laying on my back on the couch, with my knee above my heart, doing needlework and watching old movies and writing in my blogs and trying to remember when to take the extra meds and make appointments for the doctors and physical therapy. But . . . still, offered the chance, I would not have given up a single moment of flying over the earth, of becoming all the mass and grace of a 700 pound horse. I would not. Blood in my slipper. Scars on my shoulder. Bone spurs on my spine. Concussive bruise marks on the inside of my skull.

I would do it all again.

I have not gotten any wiser as I have gotten older. Half a century and I still cling to the memory of the feeling of being on a horse--of having someone who thought it was beautiful when she saw me dance.

One moment of being a dancer.

"Kiss today--"

I don't want to be pointed only toward tomorrow--not if it means that I have to leave my past behind.

I feel much better now.

Post Christmas WOW!

I was in the middle of absolutely nothing about a week ago and I was thinking about how marvelous something was and that I needed to write about it. It had something to do with my body or Christmas or my new computer . . . I think. Anyway.

We had both sets of missionaries come for dinner yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. This means:

1. I cooked a fabulous, diverse dinner menu

2. The rabbits pretty much got ignored

3. The house is still spotless--because Brent will not have a dirty house when company is coming.

This cleaning thing is one of the most obvious differences between him and me. I was looking through a pile of photos taken earlier this year. In two of them, my Visiting Teacher is vacuuming my living room. Now this is a young mother with five young children, a very big home and yard, and a husband who has a demanding job and a Church calling that keeps him away from home way too many evenings every week. Jen Shultz, though, came and we folded laundry together. Then, we walked through the house just talking. She spotted my vacuum sitting in a corner of the room and asked me if I would mind if she vacuumed my house. Thoroughly non-plussed by a request that would have completely embarrassed my sweet husband, I happily agreed to her offer.

Brent is the person who cleans our hotel room before they come to make the beds and change the towels--so that housekeeping won't think that we are messy. I am a person who figures that these talented women (for they usually are women) have magically been provided to take care of me--and I am more than happy to leave the room the way it is so that they are free to do what they will. When I see a hotel cleaning person in the hallway, I try to waylay them for a moment so that I can thank them for taking care of me and my family. Brent would rather die than be in the hotel room when a hotel worker brings us extra towels. (OK--that is a way big exaggeration--but you understand my point?)

More about Jennifer. She ran marathons, ran her children back and forth to activities and school, played the piano for Primary and taught her children to play a three-person-six-hands-triplet (?) for an informal piano recital with friends. She has had 5 children--her oldest is now about 10 years old. I admire Jen very much and am so very blessed that she counts me among her friends.

I have vague memories of such energy and spirit in my earlier existence--half a life ago. I am slow--way slower--now. Falling off of horses too many times, dancing ballet and doing gymnastics (a whole lifetime ago), increasing deafness in my hearing, manic depression, arthritis, narcolepsy, sleep depravation, a flood, a hurricane, tornados, two operations to replace my lower left thumb joint and three major attempts to re-build my right shoulder, three pregnancies and the anguish of giving birth, my mother's death, weeks when I could not sleep and months when I slept for 22 hours a day--and months when I couldn't leave my bedroom--have worn my body and my desire to learn patience very much out. Unlike some people who say that their high school years or their missions were the best times of their lives, I consciously try to tuck the things that happened before yesterday most snuggly into their far corners of my mind.

Of course, there are other events in my life that I often pull forward to replay again and again: the moment that I said "Yes." to the question of whether I would marry Brent, flying over fences and fields on horseback, flying through the steps of a ballet exercise and jumping into the air--so close to flying, laying on the hot sand of a beach and hearing the waves softly "fuesh . . . fuesh" nearby, reading wonderful books, giving talks and speeches and teaching, singing in front of others, playing the piano, playing my flute with mom a long time ago, singing to myself as I pull up weeds, dancing to the radio when no one was around to see me, having Brent curl me up on his lap and hearing his sweet tenor voice in my ear. learning how to tease bits of plants into growing into very tall and beautiful versions of their parents, the instant before I fall into sleep with Brent's even breathing as a lullaby. Even some of the painful parts I return to--the thumb, the shoulder--have elements that I return to. I treasure the moment when I realized that I would be completely able to use my left hand again--and the sweet self-revelation that I could lift my arm to lead the music or climb to the tops of trees without pain or weakness. My children are all an essential, joyful part of each of my days--though they brought searing pain with their arrival, they have returned excitement and wonder far beyond their purchase price.

My word. I am sounding maudlin tonight.

This January I will be taking a math class and an elementary photography class--black and white film and learning to process the pictures we capture. I discovered today that the junior college also teaches flying lessons and offers preparation classes for certification in both small planes and helicopters. I have also looked into the county's Master Gardener certification program. And I have a new computer and a new camera and time to visit my sisters, brothers, my father and Cindy. Tonight we bought a Jeep Wrangler--tricked out for mudding--which means that it is pretty much useless for street transportation. I am glad that Brent knows the process for getting it into the shape and that he will let me help where I can. It will be a new, intoxicating adventure.

And I am learning how to weld!!!!!

Every day there are the common, routine things. There is still laundry and dishes--though Nate pitches in and pretty much takes care of the kitchen. I am still full time tutor for him--but I like that part of our relationship. We are becoming better and better friends. He is trying to teach me how to play Mario Brothers on our Wii. Tonight he ended up carrying me a good chunk of the time so that I didn't keep dying. He tells me which moves I should make when we make chess so that I can beat him--and he just came in to ask if I wanted dinner--he will call me when it is done.

It bothers me that I don't have the same athletic body I did twenty years ago and I hate that I have to keep constantly aware to guard against the manic or the depression that a med failure allows. BUT I love that I am a size 6 and that I have a pool table and a very old baby grand piano in my living room instead of a couch and two end tables with lamps. I especially love that Brent thinks that I am beautiful and talented and wonderful and that I could never do anything that would push him away from me. I love that I have my own "nesting area" where it is OK for me to keep things in a relative chaos and where I am comfortable and can be creative. I love that I have a pool and a huge yard and three bunnies that I can push around in a pet stroller when I go for a walk with Brent in the evening.

I'm still not all that excited about being short. The absent minded thing can be a real inconvenience, too.

I am excited about Meg and La coming in a week and about Brent sitting with me on the couch later on while we watch The Big Bang or a Netflix movie. I love that I can dress up or wear my grubby garden clothes--and that Brent thinks that I am incredible no matter how I look.

New year's resolutions? Definitely not to petition, or to practice, patience. I know I would like to find more time to spend with Brent--just being with him--and more time with the Lord--just listening to Him. Two good ones to start with.