Dancing fool redeux (2)

I tried. I really did.

For two years. Two very LONG years.....

That's when my ballroom dance lessons (and money for them) came to a screeching halt, through no fault of my own. I found other non-dance related outlets. I danced socially when I could. I tried to forget how dance makes me feel.

But, like a lover that lingers in your heart, no matter that your head has scolded you, telling you it's time to move on, dance refuses to leave me alone.

As the new year dawned, I made the commitment to myself, a resolution from a person who doesn't make them: I would find a way to dance again.

Last week, I walked into a dance studio again, just like I did in April 2011 when I was going to take ONE dance lesson for my thing I had never done before. The day I fell in love with a physical way of expressing music. And I fell in love again. So far, it was one free lesson, but it's a start.

I also found a community ed class where I--and a great friend!--will learn to cha cha. Can't wait.

I've learned over the years to embrace those things I find in life that bring me joy and fulfillment and an escape from all the responsibilities I carry every day. This one has hung around for two years, waiting for me to come back to my senses.

Well, I'm back!

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~Japanese Proverb

After all, tomorrow IS another day.....

Scarlett O’Hara and I are kindred souls in many ways. Oh, not in her selfishness and vanity. (OK, maybe in the vanity part….. just a little.) But, she was a stubborn, resourceful, and independent woman at a time when none of that was admired in a lady. Yes, I realize that I’m talking about a character in a book and subsequent movie, but still…….

She moved in society as easily as she faked her way into jail to visit Rhett when she needed money to save her family and their homestead. She whined, she cried, she slapped many faces (I counted how many times in the movie rendition once, but have forgotten the number now), and she haughtily uttered some very wise things.

Such as “Tomorrow is another day.”  As I’ve aged to perfection, that one has been the most valuable to me.

When we’re young, we tend to view everything that happens to us as the stuff of our very own daytime drama. Life hums with the highs and lows we all experience, and when we’re on a high, it’s a lot of fun. But when those lows hit, we often fall into a valley of personal despair from which it’s hard to see over the rock walls surrounding us. Some people are even so naive to think that THEY won’t have any serious valleys in their lives….until they do. It’s even worse, then, because it was unexpected for those folks. And sometimes we fall into so many holes, deeper and deeper each time, that we give up trying to climb out at all. We allow the darkness to envelope us and we think that is going to be our lot in life forever.

A year or so ago, I was on top of the mountain. My life was on the high end of the pendulum’s swing. I smiled a lot; I had an activity that brought me such joy that I was literally dancing through life. I was working at something I loved—writing—so my days seemed like a playground. Then the evil genie who grabs the end of the pendulum and drags it to a stop showed up. I fell off into the dirt, scraped my knees and ran home to lick my wounds.

I think the cliché is that things can change on a dime, right? But I channeled Scarlett and we had a chat. “Fiddle-de-dee,” she said. She reminded me that this little set-back wasn’t going to last forever. She was knocked down so low once that she wore curtains for a gown to seduce Rhett. But she succeeded in her quest to chase those Yankees off her land and have a real dress again. She realized something that we all embrace as we age: tomorrow IS another day. And there will be another one after that when a low may hit again, then the pendulum swings back to happy days, if we just keep hanging on to it long enough to shake that evil genie off into the mud.

The trick is to realize that when you’re young. When life seems dismal, you have to know that things will get better…… because they always do. If we all just listen to Scarlett admonish that “tomorrow is another day,” and hang on long enough for the dawn.

I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.

Scarlett O’Hara/Gone With the Wind

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This one or that one?

I stood in the bathroom stall and watched my hands shake. The breakfast I had eaten in my dorm room was threatening to reappear and I gulped air like a fish jerked out of the water, trying to keep it down where it belonged. My breakfast, not the fish.

Speech 101 was a requirement in my course of study, which is a logical thing when you’re working toward a degree in teaching. Logical, maybe. But certainly not pleasant for young adults like I was at that age: socially inept, painfully shy, and generally miserable.

But there I was, in the cavernous bathroom of the red brick building on campus where the speech class met twice a week.

Hiding.

Hoping the sky would fall or someone called in a bomb scare, anything to postpone my agony.

No such luck, though. Dissidents never show up when you really need them, and the sky stayed stubbornly in place. I did end up getting the speech over with that day, at least for that one grade. I think this was where I also learned the trick that helped throughout college: volunteer to go first, because no one in the room would be listening to you. They were too busy wrestling their own demons to the ground as they anticipated standing in front of the class in terror. After my turn was over, however bad it was, I could sit and relax. (I didn’t listen to anyone else’s speech, either, but at least mine was OVER.)

I later took a popular public speaking course, only because my boss at the time suggested it, and I didn’t think it professionally wise to refuse him. That was probably the best thing that has ever happened to me, but I shook a lot during those days, too. I visibly trembled all over, including my voice and lips as I stood in front of the group. I know that surveys say that public speaking is one of the biggest fears most people have and I can attest to the sheer fright of it all.

All of this is strange to me in retrospect; I have made much of my living since then standing in front of people talking about a variety of things. I also learned that there is a difference in speaking to one’s peers and speaking to students. Sometimes the former is still intimidating.

But I have also learned something else.

Before I show up for a workshop or speech, I still dread it. The day arrives, along with an overall veil of angst, a sense of discomfort that takes me back to my college days. But once I stand in front of the group, whoever they might be, something happens to me. A switch is thrown somewhere deep inside me, and the gloom is gone. It feels as if I become someone else for that period of time. And it’s great. I enjoy myself. I enjoy the interaction between me and the people listening. I’ll admit that I enjoy being seen as someone worthy to hear.

The question is this: Which one is the real me? I still carry that shy, withdrawn person inside me. Sometimes she is the dominant personality. I’ve even been called a “party pooper” (actually, lots of times!), once very recently. But then an occasion arises where I must “perform.” Those of you who are aging to perfection along with me know that I even became a ballroom dancer, complete with a public performance thrown in for good measure. And I loved it. The energy associated with it is intoxicating.

So, which one is the real me? Did I finally let the true person out of hiding, or did I create a new persona to meet a need for my work?

And you thought aging meant this stuff got easier, right?

“There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.” -Dale Carnegie

Dancing fool finis.....or not

"Those who dance are considered insane by those

who cannot hear the music.” 

George Carlin

 

This is a hard one. It has been percolating for weeks, working its way to the forefront of my attention, and now clamors to be released. The writing process for me is much like a coffee pot in that respect, the idea getting hotter and hotter, my attention turning to it more frequently the higher the internal temperature rises, until I simply cannot keep my fingers off the keyboard no matter how hot those keys are. Or how much it hurts to release the lid of the pot.

 

George's words caught my attention, because I feel a bit insane right now. Many of you will remember when this Dancing Fool was born [http://agedtoperfectiondeborahhansen.blogspot.com/2011/05/dancing-fool.html] the day my feet dragged me into a dance studio as my "one thing I had never done" for that month. It was April 28, 2011. And my life changed forever.

 

I was 62 years old and I was terrified of dancing. I had been my entire life. You know how it is, I know you do: We think everyone is watching us, judging us, even laughing at our awkward attempts to move our feet and bodies in time with the music. (I learned that they aren't. They're only thinking about their own clumsy feet, but that's a topic for another day.)

 

I have become more adventurous as I aged, but I really only intended to take that one lesson and quickly check it off my bucket list. Life has its way with us, though, and I signed up for dozens of lessons with my instructor, a young man who taught me the basics of the waltz, tango, cha cha, swing, hustle, and salsa. No one was more surprised than me at these new turns on the dance floor.

 

He moved to another studio and I followed. I brought him a new student, a man who later became more than a potential dance partner. (He was only taking lessons to....well, that really is a story for another day.) My instructor put on an open house, and he and I danced the waltz in front of my friends and family, a magical experience for me that proved that you CAN teach a not-so-young woman new things.

I learned to trust someone else to lead. I learned to listen and not talk, even if I disagreed with the instruction given. I learned to stop thinking and just move, a torturous thing for someone who has lived solely in her head. I learned to smile and never stop moving. I learned to continue to move forward and not look back. My body literally changed shape as a result of using it in new ways. My love of music now has a physical manifestation that is wondrously satisfying to me. All of this was unexpected and brought such beauty to my life. For those two hours every week, I was transported to another place, one that transcended my problems, my irritations, my every day life.

The result? I can now walk onto the dance floor and do just about any dance anyone wishes to do. In fact, I can't stop moving, as those around me can attest. My feet and my body sway, tap, twirl, accompanied by a beat no one but me hears.

 

Which makes the sudden, ripping away of my dance lessons even more difficult. The details are not important to anyone but me, I'm sure. We trust people, and then we find out we shouldn't have, but would we have done anything differently if it meant never experiencing it at all?

 I will never regret dancing my way into a new life, filled with beauty and grace. No, I wouldn't change any of this for a second, regardless of its difficult end.

I guess George was right about the insanity.

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer,

and understand, for all that is life.”

 

 

      

Mirror, mirror on the wall......

I wake up sometimes and simply don't recognize my landscape any longer. Just when I had learned who peers back at me from the mirror every morning, strange happenings began obscuring that image and then started to make silly faces behind my back, startling me out of my new-found complacency.  Who would have believed we still have so much to learn at this stage of life?

I guess that's my purpose here, though. To alert all of you, especially my younger readers and friends, about what might lie ahead for you, too. All these surprises have been  a huge shock to my system, so I'm passing the lessons on to you. No charge, of course.

A few years ago I finally looked into that mirror, square on, and admitted that daily face-to-face contact with a partner doesn't work for me. It just doesn't. And I had embraced that reality, at first with some trepidation, and then I threw my arms around it with joy. I was free!

I had my work, my dance lessons, and my friends. A life lived with fullness and gratitude, one that fit me exquisitely. The quiet aloneness that once oppressed me enveloped me instead, hugging me with comfort and beauty, my time my own to fill or not, no questions to answer about timetables or destinations.

It worked for me and I loved it.

But many of us, whether paired or not, are facing a new challenge, one that didn't penetrate our awareness with any reality until it was our reality. Human that we are, we think it will never happen to us. Until it does.

My parents were inseparable. And then my dad's mind slowly fractured, piece by piece, until his essence was simply.....gone. His body continued to occupy the recliner in their living room, but he truly was not there. Finally, his body gave up, too, and my mother--his partner for nearly 70 years--was alone for the first time in her life. Ever.

What to do?

But you know, don't you? Doing the right thing in life tests us, challenges our comfortable reality, forces us to straighten our spine and then adjust that mirror to a new angle.

Maybe the lesson is to enjoy that reflection every morning of our lives. Accept where we are and be grateful that we are anywhere at all. And then be ready to tilt that mirror at a moment's notice.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

Maria Robinson



All about pacing.....

It wasn't a problem for a long time.....decades, actually.


When it became a problem, I didn't recognize it for years.


When I DID recognize it, I attempted to ignore it.


Finally, I accepted it with gritted teeth.


As we age, we find that our minds can outpace rings around our energy levels. At least that's the way it's been for me. In the morning, it sounds great to plan on attending an evening gathering with friends. Sure, why not? I say when I accept the invitation. That sounds like fun, and I like the people going, so count me in.


Oops. By about 4 PM, I realize my mistake. I've worked all day, intellectually at the office and then  physically at the gym, so I'm exhausted from head to toe and back again.

I was stymied by that for a lot of years, feeling as if I was exhibiting the "stick in the mud" mentality I was so often accused of in my 20s and 30s. (For good reason at that point in time, but the person inhabiting this skin isn't the same one who left the building a long time ago and I don't  like to be reminded of those days. I get a tad cranky when I even get a whiff of that phrase today.)


But then I realized that my energy  reserves were no longer at any "stick in the mud" levels (oh, the irony of it all, right?). It wasn't that I was sticking anywhere, to anything. My body simply couldn't keep up any longer. My life has expanded in ways that are often unrecognizable to me as I have aged. I dance, I engage in interval training that involves weight lifting, I seek out new adventures every month. I'm a lot more fun and I have fun in ways that I hadn't even dreamed of when I was decades younger.


I even hate writing this. It hurts. But reality must be faced, and this is it: We have to learn to pace ourselves as we move into the latter decades. (I did NOT say as we "get old," I hope you noticed that.) What that means on a daily basis is that I must view the events of the day, and into the evening, from a longer perspective than my younger years demanded.


If I work all day, hit the gym in the afternoon, and have some writing to do at home before I slide between my sheets to read before sleep, then I can't schedule a dance lesson that particular day. Or I have to change the gym to tomorrow, and dance today. And forget going out at night if I dance OR exercise within the same 24-hour block of day. Not going to happen. 


Yes, it's a hard reality to swallow. But those of you who are younger than me, heed my words here. You may think you are immune to what all of us ultimately face, whether it's cellulite in places you never even thought about or flagging energy levels. You're not. Sure, you can pay to have the lumps removed or buy pricey energy drinks, but the reality is still evident.


Thoreau spoke of keeping pace with our companions, and something about drums. I don't need to stay abreast of those folks. It just takes more energy to keep that drummer in sight at all.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau

Dancing fool, part 2.....

It's been a long time since I've been surprised by anything. Once you hit about 50, not much can jump out from behind a door, shout "BOO!" and still get a reaction.

But I have to admit....I am startled by my reaction to taking the "one" dance lesson in April that was my "thing I've never done before." (See http://agedtoperfectiondeborahhansen.blogspot.com/2011/05/dancing-fool.html for an update.) The one twirl around the dance floor on April 28th led to three more which then led to another 11. And now I'm signing up for months of lessons, expensive or not. I'm not sure I totally understand this myself, which is why I'm writing about it again. I write to process and this needs processing, believe me.

First of all, ballroom dancing for me is hard work. Ask me to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time, and then stand back and have a good laugh. My instructor knows when he shows me a new step, everything he's already taught me in that particular dance flies out of my head for a few minutes. It's like I wandered in off the street by mistake at that particular point in the lesson, a stranger lost in a strange land. We have to do it over and over for me to insert the new into the old and then put it all back together again, Humpty Dumpty-like. In other words, coordinated I am not. But when I get it (and I do), it is a thing of beauty. At least that's how it feels to me.

And unbeknownst to me all these years, I have been disconnected from my body. You want me to move my ribcage that way while my hips stay still? Are you crazy?? At least I'm secure enough to laugh at myself while I'm contorting my body the way he's demonstrating. How does he DO that? He's savvy enough not to laugh out loud at me, but I imagine he has a good chuckle when I stumble on home at the end of the hour. He's patient and kind and he's teaching me things I didn't even know I didn't know. I also have to trust him and relinquish control, one thing that I've learned to withhold and the other I hold onto for dear life.
My life hasn't been much fun for a very long time. All that changed with my first step on the dance floor.

Surprise!

http://www.absolutedancestudio.com/

 “You've got to dance like nobody's watching and love like it's never going to hurt.”

How did you DO that??

"How did you know you could do that?" 

The question hung in the air for a beat before I could answer it. How DID I know I could cut down a tree with a chain saw 10 years ago when that ugly tree was dying over my roof?

How did  I know how to replace the seal under my toilet when I finally figured out where that damn leak was coming from?

How did I get that 6 foot glass top to my new dining set out of the equally big box by myself?

What possessed me to start my own company with nothing but a business license and a lot of disparate information rattling around in my head?

For people like me, I guess the answer is: I didn't know that I could do it. All I did know was that those things needed to be done, and I was the only person on site to take action.

I was a single parent, working two jobs, with a very active daughter to raise. Money was tight, to say the least, but I also have a wide independent streak and believe that there isn't much I CAN'T do. We could delve into a psychological study of women like me who have some control and trust issues and an A type personality, but that would bore everyone to death, wouldn't it?

So, what did I do this month for the "thing I've never done before," my year-long journey of rejuvination that has turned out to be so much fun?

I tiled the back splash in my kitchen. About a year ago I pulled off the fiber board that has been fulfilling that purpose for over 20 years, and I just hadn't found anyone to put up some pretty white tile yet. I had the tile, the grout, the caulking.....it was all sitting there on my porch taunting me. "DO ME, DO ME!" it said every time I walked by. 

My mother didn't think I could do it. You know how mothers can convey messages without uttering a word? It's all in the body language, and hers was shouting loud and clear: YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!! YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE! YOU'LL RUIN IT!!"  Some friends said they would do it, but everybody is busy with their own stuff and it just never got done.

So, when my mother left for an overnight trip, I cleared off the kitchen counters and I tiled and grouted and caulked the night (and half the next day) away. Yes, it was hard, especially the caulking for some reason, but I just tackled the job.  Because it needed to be done.

Maybe that's not on par with my past months of new experiences.....hookah bars and driving Zs and taking a dance lesson......but it WAS new to me, something I've never attempted before.

And nobody had to tell me I could do it.

Dancing fool....

I was nervous and edgy. I almost talked myself out of going. Here it was, my fourth month of “doing something I’ve never done before” and I was thinking of ditching it at the last minute. But, I pushed through those feelings and drove to the dance studio anyway.

My hands were sweaty as I walked into the chilled studio and I was glad to see there were only a few other people there. That had been my plan, after all, when I scheduled the lesson for the dead of an afternoon during the week. I arrived and watched a woman who obviously was a competitive dancer go through some intricate moves with a partner, while an older woman shuffled along with an instructor on the far side of the dance floor. And, yes, there was actually a mirror ball hanging from the ceiling, ready to cast its jeweled reflections over the room.



I took ballet and tap lessons when I was about 5. I still have the black and white photos to prove it, complete with the tutu and daisy headpiece sliding over one eye. But I had never taken any kind of ballroom or contemporary lessons, and had never had much occasion to dance anyway. (I did go to my senior prom on a blind date...that's a story for another day.....and for the life of me cannot remember dancing.) But inside my head, I was a fantastic dancer, gliding down the staircase on the set of “Dancing with the Stars” to wow the judges with a spicy rumba or tango. In the real world, though, my experiences have not quite matched my mental images. Not quite....

It had gotten so bad that I had taken to refusing to dance with the (few) men who asked me over the years. It was just too embarrassing to walk out onto the floor, not having any idea what was in store for me, and have the guy start gyrating his body, hands flapping around his head, eyes closed, while I stood there clueless about what I was supposed to do.

My father did teach me the two-step during the years that he and my mother were dancing their way through retirement. And I could follow someone who boxed-stepped me around the floor, and sometimes I would encounter someone who led me enough that I felt like I was “dancing.” But they were the exceptions. I usually stepped on a lot of toes and had mine routinely crushed. Or I stood there and watched the gyrations, anxious to sit down so people would stop looking at me. There might as well have been a large black arrow pointing at my head as The One Who Doesn’t Know How to Dance. At least, that's how I imagined it.

And here I was, ready to take my first real dance lesson. Imagine my surprise when it only took my instructor, James, 40 minutes to prove something to me: I CAN dance, just like I experience it in my head.

What is required is a partner who knows how to lead.

Before we were finished, I was waltzing around the entire mirrored dance floor, head tilted just right, music flowing around us, with only a misstep here and there on the turns. We cha-cha’ed, his hand on my back gently telling me where to go as I flowed into the steps he had shown me. We finished with the swing, something I had seen other couples do but thought it must be too complicated for me to learn. It wasn’t. But it was a lot of fun.

This year-long journey is proving many things to me. One is that we are never too old to walk to the edge of the cliff of a new experience and take a leap, even when we’re unsure of what awaits us at the bottom. It might take a little push to go over the side or maybe just someone who can gently lead us.

Thanks, James! I can’t wait for lesson number two next week.

Absolute Dance Studio/Jacksonville

Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health - it rusts your spirit and your hips.  ~Terri Guillemets