It's funny how when we grow up things fall away. Things that were once more important than words. More important than air.
Dancing was breathing to me.
And 'enough' wasn't a word I would ever have used. Let's face it, it still isn't. Times change, but people stay the same.
To say I loved to dance would have been an understatement. I remember just waiting, living, BREATHING, waiting for my next performance. I remember being over the top excited about the costumes. I remember practicing in my room every night. I remember the little things, like chatting with the other girls about how slippery the stage might be, or the best hair spray to use, and the all important make up colours. I remember wishing there was some way I could dance more. And more! Never. Ever. Enough.
And then I was married. And started working full time. I became a grown up.
I stopped dancing on stage, only dancing at home or with students at school.
And then I became a mother. I danced around the lounge room too many times to count to try and help Jack sleep, but slowly dancing slipped further away. With my fourth pregnancy and child, Henry, dancing became something I used to do, except of course when the kids wanted me to dance with them. But it had stopped being my heartbeat.
My world of dancing disappeared. Only it never really did completely. I instead became a mum who was wildly determined not to push my loves onto my children. Perhaps a little too much. I tried hard to keep dancing at arms length, claiming it was all too hard (which it was a bit when I kept having babies!!) I felt it was in the past. I wanted to move on.
Isabel first asked to go to a dance class when she was 2. I kept rebuffing her, saying she couldn't start until she was 3. The day before she turned 3 Isabel came to me full of excitement and I asked her if she was excited about her gifts. She turned to me and replied with a knowing giggle, "no, silly. I can't wait for my first dance class tomorrow!" As she has a birthday in December I explained quickly that she would have to wait until the following year. I remember hoping she would forget. Let's just say there was no way that was ever going to happen! And so dancing re-entered my life.
There were many times I tried to entice the girls to join other sports, or gymnastics or anything really, but they just wouldn't budge. Lucy spent her first 3 terms of dancing standing perfectly still in the middle of the class, not participating once. NOT ONCE. She would then come home and do everything from the class, smiling and happy, but she would not participate in class. I would beg her to stop going and told her it was a waste of money. But she only had to look at me and say "I just love it so much mummy," and we would show up again the next week. When I gave birth to Daisy, and then ended up back in hospital, I forced the girls to take a semester off dance. The sad eyes and little comments here and there led us straight back to dancing, this time at a new dance school (Tara Becker School Of Dance) who so happened to have their concert in familiar territory.
I am not sorry the girls went back to it.
Tonight, being there again, I felt like I had gone back in time. I remembered just how awesome it all felt. The bigness and the excitement and the joy. The laughter, the chaos and the oneness of it all.
But most of all I recall that it really didn't matter that I wasn't the best dancer. I knew I never would be, but I loved it all the same. I loved dancing despite my limitations.
Sometimes joy just isn't found in greatness, but rather effort.
My joy was there in the giving of my all. Not achieving all.
It's only now that I see just how important a lesson that was to learn.
Oh motherhood. How much I wish I took this message with me and kept it close all these years!
I am never going to be the best mummy, no matter how hard I try. The truth is there is no best. There isn't. But the joy; the life-altering, I-cant-believe-they-get-to-be-mine, love-me-no-matter-how-I-screw-up, indescribable joy still exists because of the everyday. The everyday and the all. The love like breathing, chasing after them through everything, all the big and tiny moments that make up the mundane, which make up motherhood, is something I give my all to everyday. Every. Day.
Yes, dancing was once like breathing. But now it isn't.
As Lucy and Isabel listed all the types of dance they wanted to do next year, through yawns and warm milk moustaches, as they giggled on their way to bed, too excited to sleep anytime soon, I didn't stop them and tell them it would be too hard or too much money.
Instead I found myself stopping and smiling. Dancing is becoming like breathing to them.
And I knew exactly how they felt right at that moment. Because I realised right then that what feels like breathing now, will soon be quietly sleeping together in five messy beds. Five little heartbeats that will always and forever be more precious than my own. Five smiles I thank God for every night as I find my way to my sleep, after five one-last-kisses goodnight.
So now as I sit here and contemplate my all and everything, and family-like-air, I know that I can make peace with my passing love of dance. No longer do I feel the need to worry about my children simply living out my desires. The air they choose to breathe is all their own. And I'm so okay with that.
I hope they take the lessons they learn with them.
For me, it's time to check schedules and the price of tap shoes. I happen to know of the most amazing Christmas gift.
We all need to breathe.
Jen.x
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