I look at Margot some days and think if my mother returned as a dog, that would be her, paws in first position, graceful and alert, refined one moment and silly the next. “Is that you?” I whispered the other day, and Margot cocked her head and returned my stare. “Are you here?”

February 1974

If I put my foot behind my head every single day, do an arabesque on pointe, and hold it there, can I trick time? I like to think about that and, in fact, am going to hold myself to a schedule. Every day, same time, like a clock. Will it work? We will see, but first I have to get Becca to the orthodontist; we’re all hoping she can stop wearing “the strap,” and Jeff has hockey, and there is a PTA meeting I can’t skip since I’m one of the officers (what was I thinking?!), so my plans to put my foot behind my head and then stand on pointe indefinitely might have to wait until tomorrow. BRB.

Spring 1980

I love recitals. I love preparing the dancers for their parts. Sometimes I read stories aloud; sometimes we watch films that match the ballet. The story of Romeo and Juliet was one we watched when you were a student, Becca; a circle of 15-year-old girls at the theater for the Zeffirelli version shrieking in delight to see Romeo’s bare butt. You all knew the story (you had read it in English class), but you watched faithfully, all hoping for the very best and happiest of endings. And yet Romeo still died. Don’t we all harbor the hope, the wish, that something magnificent will happen? Don’t we all marvel at how easily we can get lost within a work of art? That’s what dance has always meant to me. I can get as lost watching as I can in my own movement to music, feet gliding as if on autopilot.

The recital of “Romeo and Juliet” was not one of the best given. That boy from Wellesley who’d volunteered to help since we had so few boys in class overplayed the comic appeal of Mercutio’s character and kept springing back to life for one more little dance. I wanted to slap him for getting in the way of what should have been a poignant part, but in the end it didn’t matter. Parents did not like how few parts there were for the little ones, and more than one said that there was way too much death for the children to understand. Such is my occupational hazard, and so back to woodland fairies and “The Nutcracker” I go, bribing little Polichinelles to stay under Mother Ginger’s skirt until the right moment, and explaining why we all can’t be Clara.

(Shred?)