All These Places

When I was young I took dance classes.  Ballet, jazz, tap, you name it.  I loved the way dancing made me feel.  I loved the soft pink leather shoes that I wore to class and the girlfriends that danced along beside me.  I loved feeling like I was good at something, that with enough practice I could master a move.

                Each year, we had a recital in the springtime and all of our hard work during the year would lead up to this one event.  As a class, we would pick out our costume and then order our sizes.  We would practice the steps over and over again so that on that one magical night, we would perform them flawlessly.

                When the night of the recital arrived, I would take the stage with the class, the old wooden boards of the performance center not nearly as slippery as the ones in the studio, lights shining up from in front of me, masking the faces of all those grinning parents that sat in rows of folding chairs.

                And I would dance, the steps mastered over months and months, knowing that this was the proof that those classes had worked.

                At the end of the performance, the sound of applause would take over and our class would bask in it, knowing we did well.  And then it was done.  We wished each other happy summers and knew that we would do it all again the following year.  My last recital, during my senior year of high school, I bawled at the end of the performance, knowing that I would never again take that stage. 

                There was just something so gratifying about seeing that the steps I had learned, the practice that I had put in, would culminate in one moment of perfection.

                I feel like my life has been a series of dance practices, of soft pink shoes slowly treading through experiences and moments.  My decisions are pirouettes; my eight counts are the years that weave in and out. 

                And I’m left to wonder about the recital…when the lights shine on my face and the audience waits with their breath held and their hands waiting to come together in praise, will I be ready?  Will these steps make sense?