Tag Archive for: Dancing

The Woman Who Danced Down the Grocery Aisle–by T.K. Thorne

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Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

The woman—dark hair with hints of auburn, the back scooped up in an invisible comb—dances down the aisle of the grocery store between the boxes of cereals and the baking goods. Pushing her cart, she sways to the store’s muzak, oblivious that the young girl beside her slows her pace and pretends to study the canned soups to put as much distance as possible between them.

I didn’t want anyone to suspect the dancing woman was my mother. It didn’t matter that I knew no one personally at the grocery store. Other than the two of us, the aisle was empty, at least for the moment. I held my breath, praying that the music would change to something less jaunty, and she would lose her enthusiasm for kicking out a leg or bouncing from foot to foot.

Even so, beneath my embarrassment, down in the dark, secret earth of girlhood, a seed now nestled—Would I ever dare to do such a thing—a brazen dance of joy in inappropriate places without thought of who was looking? Though my feet dragged, my heart glimpsed a possibility where one dared to be and to express that being.

In childhood, I dared this. I would sit in the middle of a busy sidewalk to examine a dandelion or an ant or cry in front of company to protest something I didn’t like. As a teen, I lost this freedom, submerging it to a craving to be like others, to be accepted, to be the daughter of someone who walked their cart down the grocery aisle. 

My mother addressed the world with humor (“I like to generalize without specific knowledge.”) and quiet wisdom. She was the fixer, whether it was “kissing better” a scraped knee or advising how to handle a frisky boyfriend. When her father died, she comforted me, not shedding a tear on her own behalf, at least in my presence. I can’t remember her being upset or even angry. How can that be? In my memory she danced through life, beaming light on all those in her path.

Between making meals, making dresses, and shuffling me to ballet classes, horseback riding classes, and the library, she did significant things for the community. Those things earned her posthumous recognition, but from my self-centered perception, they were peripheral to her main job of “mother.”

Now that I am well into adulthood, and she is gone, I realize that she did not have the perfect, carefree life of my assumptions. I can only imagine her pains, but I learned from her that pain does not have to define my life—that I get to do that. I can dance down the grocery aisle.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)?–Click on image below. Thanks for stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

Dancing in My Dreams

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Dancing in My Dreams by Debra H. Goldstein

When I was in college, I finally decided to make my father happy.  He believed the only safe careers for women were nursing and teaching.  Because he acknowledged I wasn’t suited to be a nurse, he pushed for teaching. I didn’t agree.  That is, until I discovered twelve hours plus student teaching would qualify me for a high school teaching certificate in the state of Michigan. A slam dunk – Daddy happy and I would have another minor.

I immediately signed up for all of my education courses to be taken the next term. My favorite one, which I still use in so many ways today, was Methods, but there was another course that by reverse osmosis left its mark on me.  I can’t recall the name of the course nor the subject matter, and I only remember the teacher as a screwball, but I remember most of our grade was based on a research paper.  Another slam dunk for me to get an “A” in the course because it would count fifty percent in the final calculation.

One student, a football player whose name was making headlines, objected to the fifty percent factor.  He wanted the paper to count at least seventy-five percent, if not more.  The teacher refused.  The football player sulked.

The day came to turn our papers in – one for the teacher and a copy for each member of the small

class.  Most of the papers were double spaced well-written examinations of some education related topic.  The football player’s paper, with two inch margins and triple spacing, was on visualization.  He wrote how, at practice or sitting in his dorm room, he visualized the quarterback throwing a long pass in his direction.  Slowly, in his mind, he raised his hands and the ball nestled in them. He mentally visualized the arm of the quarterback pulling back to throw, the trajectory of the ball, and it softly landing in his hands. His conclusion was that if he visualized every aspect enough, it would all come together in a real life moment.

We all mocked the paper and I have no idea what grade he received, but in the end, his paper is the one that stuck with me. For it is when we visualize something long enough, that eventually we find a way to make it happen.

I visualized linking words together to write a story and it happened.  I visualized my thoughts and words coming together into a book and dared to dream someone would publish that book – and it already has happened twice. Most recently, my visualization has been more physical. My waking moments concentrate on standing, walking, and fitting my reconstructed foot into a sneaker. Slowly, the details are happening in real time and I am expanding what I dare to imagine. I’m visualizing words flowing from my mind into a new book series and I’m dancing in my dreams.