I say I am not really a religious person, and yet in so many ways, I am. Bits of this and bits of that have stuck and stayed with me; the part of the Christmas story that I have always loved is when we are told that “Mary pondered them in her heart.” I always think, yes, that’s what mothers do. They ponder. They ponder in their hearts. Devoted parents never stop worrying. It’s one of those things you never really know until you get there—like what it’s like to have a baby, lose a parent, lose a good friend, lose many good friends.

Part of my wanting to be a dancer was all about the props, and that it made me feel close to my mother; being a dancer had been her dream, her desire, and she loved all kinds of dancing and was quick to learn. She had a natural sense of movement and rhythm, which I had to work hard to master. I was always much more comfortable with ballet—the discipline, the way that I sometimes felt I disappeared while stretching at the barre, muscles warming and lengthening. I was never able to simply cut loose on a dance floor and shake and shimmy all over. I have always admired the kind of uninhibited force that allows people to go to such places. It still makes me laugh to think of my mother breaking into song and dancing, pretending she was adorned with jewels and feathers. She once bought a pineapple (not easy to find, and quite pricey, my father noted) just to hold it up on her head like Carmen Miranda.

While I was never a natural dancer, I was a disciplined one, and I think that’s what enabled me to be a good teacher. What I loved most were those years of leg warmers and classical music, the wordless stories unfolding in movement. I wanted to teach dance as much as anything, to create the stage for recitals, to line up the little cubbies there by the door, where they placed their street shoes and jackets. I wanted to make a difference, and I think my little school would have made my mother very proud. That’s what I like to think. And at the end of the day, when all the children from the last class had been picked up and driven home, I loved to just sit there, rubbing my shoes in that box of rosin. And then I would turn the lights off and go to the center of the room, just the street light coming in, and rise on pointe, and then extend my left leg and see how long I could stay.