The Girl Who Danced
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
January 11, 1930
Dear Howard,
“…..I have been to two dances this week and had a fine time. One dance I danced twenty four dances of the twenty five. And then the place where we ate after the dance they were playing dance music and I wouldn’t have minded dancing some more. I have Monday off next week and I am going up in an aeroplane if I don’t loose my courage before then.”
Yours,
Adalyn
When I knew my Grandmother she was bedridden most of the day. She had a heart condition that controlled most of her adult life. It was her heart that took her places and her heart that now held her captive. I remember watching General Hospital on the sofa while she napped, or learning to sew by her side and taking long breaks for tea. She got “permanents” (perm) at home from my mom and a trip to the diner was well-planned to keep things easy for her.
This certainly was not an establishment we were stumbling into late at night after a full dance card looking for more. We all decided what we were ordering and wrote it down before we even left the house. And she wasn’t dancing in the diner. I wonder if sitting there, she thought back to that moment, to the moment she could. I bet she was glad she did. I would have been grateful. Grateful that I chased my dream, that I even dared to dance, before the dream changed.
What a juxtaposition, she was not old, maybe just my age. The freedom of her youth and her curiosity about the world was infectious. She did not mind being seen as an Old Maid for wanting more than just marriage. She thought girls were marrying too young. I have an image of this red-headed woman dancing with abandon in a place she traveled far to be, a place that she defied convention for. Yet her heart was always split between that overwhelming curiosity and her longing for the farmer. Her heart….
There is a pause between freedom and farming and she lived into that with courage as well. It is hard to stand in the gap and accept the circumstances of life as it sometimes happens to us. I don’t know the story that brought her another man’s baby shortly before she was to leave, but the courage to find a way home, to stand again and say I still love you if you still love me, is huge.
It seems to be where I find myself these days, the gap. I have shaken off the past and stand in the sunshine waiting for my feet to dance. It’s all brand new. But where am I going? It can feel odd, freedom. Maybe just go, think later. I was speaking with a friend the other night who is paralyzed by anxiety. She had just received a gorgeous supporting message from her grandmother and was headed to meet all of us for dinner, a dressed-up girl’s night out. She leaned into me and said,
“So sorry I am late. I just froze up. I believe in you. I believe you would be there for me. I believe you are really my friend, so why am I terrified?”
I paused, refreshed by her honesty. I saw myself in her.
“I think it is because you don’t know what to do with joy. There are no monsters under the bed, sometimes that is just as scary.”
What do we do when the pain stops or the dream changes? Dance. Fuck the takers or those with limited visions of this life. Just move. Don’t let the talons of our captors hold you any longer. You are free. It’s a new dream. Let go and trust that where you are is good and not somehow less than because it is not like other people. I need to dance those 24 straight dances.
My Grandmother was lucky, her love of the farmer matched the moments she felt the wind in her hair. When you are ill you often see the immense beauty in the small things, reality bends a little and your vision becomes so clear. It’s like a superpower. You see value in more than what the world offers or what we are "supposed to be.” You just kind of know better. Imagine the secrets she held while everyone else ordered french fries. Her quiet joy, the simply living of it all. I never once heard her complain.
frē′dəm
noun
The condition of not being in prison or captivity.
The condition of being free of restraints, especially the ability to act without control or interference by another or by circumstance.
There was a time when I was ill, deathly ill, and given days to live. I had noticed weeks earlier that a large lump had formed on my leg and then another and another. Then they burst wide open. I looked as if I had been shot multiple times. I was busy, working, and raising kids, no time to do anything but clean and wrap my legs, and head off to work. I had called the Dr several times and was told she was booked and given the soonest appointment.
Then one day, armed with my Christmas shopping list I headed out. I was headed to the doctor for that long overdue appointment and then to the store. TVs were on sale. I wanted to get one for the children for Christmas. Truth be told I had thrown theirs out a year earlier. I warned them if they could not stop arguing over what to watch I would……and I did. But they had been great all year and so I thought it was time. I would get them a big screen TV, (big being relative as this was 2001.)
Anyway, that was my plan, but I was weak, really weak and I had been having trouble walking. I did wonder quietly how I was going to get that TV home but, a mother’s determination gets things done.
I love my doctor. We had a longstanding relationship. She walked into the room and said “Wow you look great! What’s up?”
I rolled up my pant legs and her expression changed. She stepped back to the wall and motioned her nurse to do the same. She stood quietly.
Then: “I know, or think I know what is going on. The problem is testing is going to take 48 hours….you don’t have 48 hours. How did this get this way?”
I let her know I had called in multiple times but this was the soonest I could get in. Her expression changed Now there was anger in her jaw. Was it for me? She excused herself and I overheard her in the hall having a pointed conversation with a receptionist on what constitutes an emergency. She was going to lose a patient because of scheduling! I love her. But also, I heard her. When she came back in, her nurse still standing on the wall, she said,
“We are going to do everything. We are going to hit this with everything we have, but we are racing this infection to your heart without full knowledge yet of how to treat it. Your job is to be perfectly still. I mean perfectly. People love you. Call them now. They need to come now. Don’t feel like you are imposing. Lean in.”
So I did. People came from near and far. I kissed my children and sent them away so they would not have to watch the next part. They were small. I was still, drugs coursing through my veins hoping to dilute the time bomb racing to my heart…..a bomb that could set off your heart…… I kept seeing my grandmother’s face.
In these hours of stillness, I found myself forgiving anything I held and I noticed and wished for the smallest things. I wanted to give my children Christmas gifts. I wanted them to have that darn TV. I wanted them to have one more thing from me. I thought of my grandmother and General Hospital, and cups of tea disguised as breaks from sewing, really meant for her to rest. I wasn’t sad. I was concerned, but mostly observant of the love that fills the air with color.
“When you are free, you take responsibility for who you really are.”
Edith Eger
We had another friend who was dying of cancer. Two weeks earlier we had thrown her a goodbye party. I know it sounds irreverent but it got her out of the house, surrounded her with friends, gave her husband a moment to breathe and her a moment to feel like herself once more. We rented out a tea house for the afternoon so she would have privacy and access to her own bathroom. That day, naturally there was a blizzard. Her husband was worried about sending her. I, being a smart ass said, “What is she gonna do, die?”
“……………Good point,” he said and we all gathered for four beautiful hours and talked little girl dreams, drank tea, and ate sandwiches as the snow fell outside. It was magical.
The irony of the moment I was now living was not lost on me. We could see my friend’s end and had some time to celebrate her. But was I really going to beat her out the door?
Maybe.
Clearly, I survived, and a few weeks later my friend passed away. I was so glad to be in the church with beams of light coming through the window that early February morning. They let us know she was there too, dancing around the room. I had not seen anything like it. Soon I began to walk again. It would be another year to heal. The echoes and lessons of my Grandparents live in me, as well as that irreverent love-filled day in the tea shop. These are moments where joy overcomes sadness or change. I always watched my grandparents gently embrace each other where they were at. The love they shared over something as simple as toast sang in my memory;
“Would you pass the Strumberry jam, Mrs. Groff?”
“Why certainly Mr. Groff.”
“Well that was delicious, now I shall go organize my curls,” he would say. And off he would go to start the day.
No achievement shines brighter than these moments and no calamity can take them away. Now I remind myself not to worry about what is next or what other people think. Grandma didn’t. And she got it all. Her torn heart healed in love. My friend’s husband sent me a letter a few months after her passing. “Thank you. She talked about that day until the end. Thank you for not listening to my fear.”
I think the best part of traveling far and wide, or down the street in a storm for tea, is returning, humbling, loving, trusting more is to come, and living each day with full knowledge that this is the gift. If I was to fill my blank card with anything it would be to live a little more like Grandma. The young girl who danced on and on and on and then sank all the way into the full life of love that continued long after the dancing stopped.