Dear You,
It’s been a while since we last talked. Or maybe it hasn’t. We were in class last semester. Last year. A decade ago. You wore flip flops, pink tights, shorts over pants, that shirt with the cat on it. You entered a dance studio for the first time somewhere between the ages of 3 and 80. I’ve been thinking of you lately.
You sent me a voice memo earlier this year about seeing one of your professors taking a recent graduate out for lunch. “We know who the favorites are,” you said. I felt the disgust in your voice. Your speech got faster and your accent thickened because you always speak with a stronger accent when something is bothering you. Were you ever explicitly fed the lie that teachers don’t (shouldn’t) have favorites? I’ve wracked my own brain for when someone first told me that. No luck. I have a hunch that the fallacy was a second hand inheritance, solidified after hearing one too many teachers say “I don’t have a favorite” in the presence of someone to whom they don’t want to admit that they do, in fact, have a favorite. Here’s the thing: everyone has favorites. You have favorite teachers, and I have favorite students. You can be my favorite because we get something about each other; or because we clash in radical, provoking ways; or because we understand that we have a mutual respect for one another. You don’t have to like me to be one of my favorites. I also don’t have to like you. (Weird, right?) But something about you asks me to pay attention, really pay attention.
Do you remember the time you declared that when you grew up you were going to work at Applebees like your mom? You were so sure. And so little. You probably don’t recall the comment. You also probably don’t remember squirming around on the bench like a seal, because you weren’t technically supposed to be in that level II ballet class. Someone brought you to the studio at 10AM instead of 9AM and left you with me because they had somewhere else to go. The big girls were discussing being ballerinas some day. They did plies and held their necks long. You looked at yourself in the mirror and stuck out your tongue to see how spiky your tastebuds were. And oh, I loved having you there.
I hold close the day you came to tell me about the school you got into, the class you passed, the great essay you wrote, the worst year of your life. I also remember the things you didn’t have to talk about: the night you fell asleep on the studio floor, that year your family stopped coming to your performances, your transformation from wallflower to center of attention, the day you put yourself on the line for better conditions for your peers.
We met by chance around town one day. Your eyes grew so wide when you saw me and I saw you; it was three weeks after you stopped coming to class. I could feel the words that were stuck somewhere in the back of your throat: “Oh shit.” You plastered a grin on your face then turned toward me and started trying to explain your absences. I was so happy to see you; I meant it when I told you that. Because even though you sat in the back of the room and didn’t talk at all, I noticed when you stopped showing up and wondered what was happening to you. I knew a small bit about what you were surviving. You deserved the space to survive it. Your walk was stiff when we parted. I hope you know that I never thought ill of you, and you would have been welcome back in class if you had ever decided to return.
When I need something sweet, I call your first dance to mind. You wore your hair in two fluffy bear buns on top of your head. You were five. The session wasn’t supposed to be a private lesson, but it was. Your smile was so big it closed your eyes.
For a while, I was in a long term relationship with a man I eventually wouldn’t marry. You and your gang of fellow eight-year-olds told me that if he ever wronged me, you would beat him up. I believed all of you, you especially. Your battement was so high, you could have kicked that poor man in the teeth. He wouldn’t have deserved that, of course, but your loyalty was that fierce. You gave yourself a nickname because it made you feel cool. You were cool, so the other girls adopted it too.
These days, we live in different orbits. I can’t check on you too often because your current situation breaks my heart for a younger version of myself. I watch the signs of you pulling away and of getting pulled away. I know what it feels like to be 20something and “seen” by someone who wants something from you, but is pretending to give your career to you. The whole situation feels important, intoxicating. Yet, striving does not guarantee that you are going anywhere; it only implies that you are working hard. It makes me ill to watch you give everything to someone who calls threats promises and then takes credit for your greatness. I know we won’t talk about it because you deleted my message, but I’m still here.
There are plenty of things we worked on, if not together, at least simultaneously—-maybe they were drop swings, a little kick ball change, a fast fact about writing, the finer points of asking for help. But I know, and perhaps you do too, that a lot of learning happens quietly without an appointed “teacher” in the room. You will keep learning things, and you will pass those things on to others. There will be pleasures, frustrations, depths, portals, holes. Learning still makes me angry sometimes. Does that ever happen to you? It feels like getting smarter should mean figuring things out, but then the only thing you figure out is that there is always more to know.
The most useful thing I’ve learned as an adult is that growing up isn’t a series of ladder rungs that get you closer to being “correct”; it’s a process that asks you to look around yourself and take time to see things. A lot of the time there isn’t a right answer. There’s a lot of conversation, a hearty dose of dreaming, and more honest apologies than I would have liked. There is very little applause. We’re thrown a lot of reasons why we should be seeking applause. Those monkeys with the cymbals do a lot of clapping, but they aren’t getting anywhere. Keep doing things. People may not always be “looking,” but for those in your care, what you do is consequential.
I smile the most when I think about that one day. Can we talk about it? The performance that cracked you open? The words fell from your fingertips. The dance possessed you. You were seized by some otherworldly sense of well-placed confidence. You felt, in the thickest ropes of your blood, that the thing you were doing was exactly as it needed to be. And indeed, it was perfect. What a privilege it was to be there. I watched you know, in real time, that something had clicked. That you were everything that the moment needed you to be. I could have screamed. (I probably did, in my own way.) Because you knew what it meant for a singular experience to feel more than most other things. I hope you hold that sensation close and draw it up whenever you need something to remind you just how alive you are.
What a pleasure it has been to teach you.
You are indeed, unforgettable.
With Love,
J
