Reflections Dance

Yesterday I danced.

It had been a long time.

Maybe you couldn't call what I did dancing. My ankles are still stiff, my muscles weak compared to what they were. But I looked in the mirror and my reflection moved and somehow it felt like the beginning of a dance.

At times, I sat on the floor and waited. For my self to catch up. My mind, my body, my hope.

The teacher smiled and said it was okay. I was there, and it was okay. "Be gentle on yourself," she said.

I wanted to tell the whole room (it was fuller than it had ever been)... "Really, I haven't always been this way. I'm not a dancer, to be sure, but I used to be able to move through a whole class." I wanted them to know I belonged there. I wanted to be more than a suggestion of what is real and good.

For some reason, my mind turned to the Chilean miners. I thought of them coming to light. I wondered if they'd both remembered and forgotten what it was like to see by day. I wondered if they felt the need to belong again to the world, if they felt the need to say, "I am real and good."

That is such an odd connection. I don't know why I made it. Something about a return after months. Something about both forgetting and remembering. Something about shadows and reflections. Maybe it is the whole Plato's Cave thing. The real, dancing in shadows on the wall. The wondering if we are the shadows or the real or both.

Words are escaping me on this. I want to say I am both— the dance and the reflection of the dance. The shadow and the real. I want to say that both are beautiful. Just see for yourself...









Pound Ridge Reflections photos, by L.L. Barkat. In honor of Claire's HighCalling PhotoPlay.