“If I could turn back time, I would have continued dancing,” my 80-year-old mother said to me after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Tonight, I was waiting for my ballet class when another instructor asked, “Would you like to watch the girls perform to the Backstreet Boys?”
Of course! I love watching little girls dance.
They looked about ten years old, in perfect ballet dresses and shoes, with big smiles and sparkling eyes. As the music rose, they held their heads high, arms in the air, legs gliding elegantly across the floor.
My eyes started to blur.
For a moment, I saw the little me among them—dancing in the wind, turning, laughing out loud.
I was raised by my grandparents and my six aunts. My youngest aunt was a kindergarten teacher who danced beautifully. She taught me how to dance and how to perform. She took me shopping and dressed me in beautiful skirts, shoes, headbands—everything.
I was her little princess.
I kept dancing in college. The girl who slept in the bunk above mine was on the college dance team, always performing onstage. I pictured myself up there with her.
But I wasn’t good enough to make the team.
My mom loved dancing, too. I can still picture her: long braided hair, standing high on a partner’s knee during a college performance, her chin lifted toward the sky. She looked fearless.
Then she started working. Raising a family. Making ends meet.
She retired at 55, planning to enjoy life. Instead, grandchildren needed her. Twenty years slipped by. Then came Parkinson’s disease.
Tonight, I walked into a ballet class that quickly filled with young women. I realized I might be the oldest woman in the room. Some of them had probably been dancing for years; some were just beginning.
And suddenly, something occurred to me.
All those years in college, I worried that I wasn’t good enough to dance onstage.
Tonight? I don’t care.
I may be clumsy. I may look funny. I may feel awkward. But I am moving. I am living. I am free.
My mother wishes she could turn back time and keep dancing. I can’t turn back hers. And I can’t turn back mine. But I can decide what I do with the time still in front of me.
So years from now, should someone ask what I did with that time, I will smile and say:
“I danced.”
Many of you know me through my real estate newsletter, Full Bloom. Rose at Large is where I’m beginning to share the stories I kept private for years. I’m glad you’re here.