“I’ve never seen you look so confident,” Julz said to me. “That’s because I decide to have fun,” I told her.
It was the last dance of the class. Emily, Callie, Trish and I danced while Julz and Kathleen watched. They give us pointers, tell us what we did wrong and what we did right.
Whenever I’m dancing now I remind myself to have fun. When I feel myself tightening up, afraid I’ll make a mistake, start to panic about taking the lead or I’m just thinking too much, I say to myself… “Maria have fun!”
Suddenly I can breathe again, the tension gives up and my whole body sinks down into my feet which are now flat on the ground. It’s like I’m seated in myself. Then I smile.
Thank goodness for my metatarsalgia, that burning pain in the ball of the right foot. It keeps me flat on feet and has improved my dancing.
“Look at you walk,” Julz tells me as we make out way through the dark parking lot to our cars.
I could feel it. My heels making contact with the ground make my shoulders drop down my back. I rock on the soles of my feet in a slow, intentional, grounded kind of swagger.
Which came first my epiphany to have fun, my growing confidence or keeping my feet flat on the ground?
Maybe they all just happened at the same time, a three way collision, my own Big Bang.
