How did you know? I’ve wondered that for ten years after your words sunk in. How did you know my brain would tuck this vulnerability in its folds until I needed it most? Creating a memory that still warms me from my core.
There are so many questions I’d like to ask still. I remember it like it was yesterday; we were in the big studio, the one where the big kids danced. You brought me in to hear the song I’d be listening to, the person who played my big sister sing. I wasn’t anyone. I might have been seven. I don’t think I was even competing yet. I wasn’t even going to end up being that great of a dancer, although you didn’t know that then. I did love it, though. I look back on those years with mostly fond thoughts.
The song came. I stood, alone, feet away from you, very intimidated—it was only the two of us there that day. I guess you wanted to see if I could act at all. I felt so very small; you were larger than life. You had produced Rockettes and Broadway stars, and I was tiny and awkward.
I remember the first few notes pounding into my brain, and immediately panicking—this was going to make me cry. Someone had just made fun of me at school for crying. Then the tears came, and instead of the predicted disdain, all of a sudden your eyes were soft, and you were on your knees at my level telling me how valuable it was that I could feel like that. You told me that my tears were a gift, and I should hang on to that emotion as tightly as I possibly could. I didn’t get the significance of it, of course, although I knew I felt better—well enough to go right into real rehearsal. If someone like you, so proud and talented, could tell me it was okay to cry, well, it must be.
Years later, I wondered if you saw more than I thought—the fear that I lived in, the anxiety my life produced even at a tender age. Then, for a long time, I stopped feeling altogether; I buried that conversation so deep I forgot about it.
Until one day, a little more than ten years later. I woke up, I woke up, and the world was vibrant again, and I could cry. Not just cry; I could feel good again, too. I remembered what you told me so long ago, that it was not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. I realized slowly that you taught me the most important lesson I ever learned in that hot, smelly ballet studio. You taught me that I was strong, and maybe subconsciously I continued to feed on that throughout my life, but it wasn’t until later, after not feeling for so long, that your words came rushing back to me.
The whole time I danced, you were untouchable, someone I only dreamed to impress, because you were so impressive. This was the only true interaction we had throughout my many years there—again, I was not very good. I found my own art, but it did change the way I thought about myself and others. Maybe on a delay, a long delay, but it did.
You were right, I shouldn’t be ashamed of feeling, because feeling is the most human thing you can do.
We were ships passing in the night. You told me exactly what my tiny broken heart needed to hear. I still sometimes wonder how you knew that was exactly what I needed to hear. I still wonder if you could see my home through my eyes. You told me exactly what my fifteen-year-old self needed to hear. You told me exactly what my thirty-year-old self needed. When a lesson is that important, it keeps teaching you things throughout your life.
I’ve written the feeling of your words into poetry, integrated the feeling of safeness in that moment into my visual art. I’ve allowed myself to sit in uncomfortable moments instead of avoiding them because of those words.
So even if you didn’t know, you changed me that day. I don’t remember much from being a child, but I remember the smell of resin for the pointe shoes I was too young to wear, the way the room warmed when you smiled kindly at my tears. I remember the notes of the music, and now I remember the memories of those few minutes saving me over and over again.
To be so sensitive in this world is to walk around as if your skin were on fire, and yet instead of telling me I wasn’t in pain, you told me it was okay to express it. The most important lesson, the most valuable lesson.
We never connected after that day. You were only my teacher for a moment. Then I was passed on to less experienced hands, hands that didn’t know how to stop a scared child’s world and make them feel heard. I learned from them, but never anything as important as what I learned from you.
That day changed shame into pride and fear into forgiveness. You would never know; for you, it was a second. Just another day.
- The Dance Class Edgar Degas 1873
- This is my own work and has not been generated in whole or in part by AI
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