Turns From The Corner, Lullabies, A Pen, A Paintbrush

Balance', balance', pique (single), pique (double), prepare and triple (honor demands you try again if you fall out of the first triple pirouette, but if you do not pull up sufficiently the second time, you will double the next go round), glissade assemble' derriere (if you eat up enough floor with this, you can add a whole combo to your turn), inside pirouette (single), soutenu. Repeat as many times as you can fit in your diagonal run.

When I think of my teenage self in Miss Van Valey's studio, this is truly my favorite "turns from the corner" sequence. It must have resonated in my bones to be with me 50-some years later. I can hear Mrs. Erhardt playing the modest upright piano in the corner, Miss Van Valey calling out corrections, which were adamant and loud when we missed a position. Never was it an option to finish a pirouette in a questionable position other than the assigned one. I still long for the feeling of exact balance, the string from the crown of my head, a taught helper lifting, lifting, lifting me out the standing hip that can fool one into sinking into the floor, away from the sky that we aspired to inhabit.

I loved to dance. It snuck into my dreams, snuck into my identity. It studied ballet only until I went to college. Then I learned that the sky I had longed to inhabit en pointe was open to new, creative, limitless ways to dance.

One day, I traded my dancing for mothering. Another love. Another way to see beyond myself. A gift.  Though there were hard days, tired days, confused days, heartbreaking days, I was a mother to my bones. Maybe my favorite part was singing lullabies, reading to them, praying with them at bedtime.

Another day, in a bid to let the kids grow up to be their own people, I took up a pen. Or, more accurately, a keyboard. I wrote stories. I wrote devotions, and books, and poems and songs and emails and facebook posts and and and and. I was a writer. In my soul. Words made pictures, made conclusions, made unanswerable questions, made me stop stop stop and think.

Last summer, a day came along that put a paintbrush in my hand. At 63, I suddenly saw color and composition as an opportunity to seek that same sky, that rarefied air that called to me as a teen age ballerina. Now I'm painting everything that catches my fancy. I am a baby in the school of art, a novice of the first degree in all things art. But that is not a stumbling block for me, because I have the absolute luxury of learning something new.

I was so blessed that my parents worked hard to give me dance lessons. I was incredibly blessed to mother three of my favorite people. I was blessed to have the time, and support of my husband, and the means to learn to write. And I feel the same now with painting. And I am grateful.

Turns from the corner will inhabit the long-hallowed halls of my memory. Mothering lives on in my heart, long after the children are grown. Writing still calls to me, giving me voice. And painting is an exciting journey into new territory. Hello sky. I see you up there. Waiting.