One for the road

Been reflecting a bit today as I spend one of the last days in our house of 15 years. Reflecting on who I have been over the last 15 years, the many iterations of Me. We bought this house when I was 23. I was an old 23.

Hell, I was an old 15.

I have a slightly weathered soul that I recognize in others when I see it in them too. My husband, who I’ve known since junior high school, describes it as a sort of sadness. I feel it as more of a knowing. Even as a young person, I can recall feeling a lack of connection with most people I met, even though I might enjoy their company for a time. It was like they were not able to hear the frequency of things as I heard them. I often wished, and sometimes still do, that I could turn that frequency off, as it’s often not a pleasant tone. It carries notes of finality, transience, and futility and leaves a sour taste on my tongue and a slight ringing in my ears.

I’ve never been good with retrospection, finding Time and its passing to be a completely overwhelming concept and one that leaves raw cuts that are too tender to dress. This was deepened when I had my daughter, Celia, and I felt the passage of time through her as well. Each moment was a bittersweet mixture of pure joy and the deepest sadness one can feel. I’m sure most mothers may relate. I knew each moment, each “phase” and each person she grew into and out of was fleeting and I could never get a steady grasp of it. Watching her grow felt like a million tiny births dispersed in an equal amount of a million tiny deaths as she changed and continues to change now as an 18 year old college freshman.

So Mother is probably the largest identity I’ve held, and still continue to hold, though in a new way yet again.

I’ve always stated, especially as a young mother, and the mother of an only child, that I never wanted my whole identity to be wrapped into that of “Mother.” That off-toned frequency sang of days that would approach faster than I was ready for, days like today, when my one child is no longer a child and is out of the house and have left me in a very quiet room to hear my own thoughts. And here we are.

I’ve always loved writing, even when I was not actively doing so. I would create narratives in my head the same way I create choreography in my head when I’m not dancing, or could not reasonably dance any longer.

Dance.

Dance was something that you did when you were a kid, maybe continued in high school if you really liked it, then most likely left behind unless you were one of those few that were good enough and lucky enough to make it a career. I was never going to be one of those individuals, so I left dance behind after college like most adults and secretly mourned it until I came across an opportunity as an adult to dance in a local ensemble company.

I fell in love. Hard.

Dance became a beacon for me, making me want to better myself physically and to socially make myself available to the community of people that this new world opened to me. The cliffnotes version of my dance story is this: I had two wonderful years in a company I enjoyed and that challenged me, then two years after that with a new artistic director and a very changed company. I still wanted to dance, but I no longer enjoyed it, and I was stressed more because I had reluctantly agreed to act as executive director to the company, which was a non-profit arts organization. That sucked a lot of the joy out of it for me. After four years, I left.

Without trying to be hyperbolic here, not having dance as an outlet, even the watered-down and stressful version I lived the second two years with the company, felt like being given an extraordinary gift but then giving it back. I grieved for it. I was certainly never going to be the next Martha Graham but dance fed my spirit in a way nothing had since I used to write regularly.

About two years later, mid-pandemic, I made an attempted casual return to dance with drop-in classes, but was kind of disgusted with myself when I found I could no longer hack it. It wasn’t just being slightly out of shape. My balance and equilibrium while moving were really off. During one class I became so dizzy I actually had to run to the restroom and vomit. I had experienced one other episode like this a few years earlier where I could not even stand and ran into a wall to stay upright. After that episode, I was never completely the same and I would become dizzy fairly easily, but nothing like I experienced at this drop-in class the summer of 2020. This would later come out as symptoms of my Multiple Sclerosis.