Summoning My Inner Ballerina

The Confident Ballerina

She stands erect, arms raised in a perfect arc, feet carefully positioned. A proud smile adorns her face, her lips painted crimson against her pale skin, her stick-straight hair permed for this special occasion. Her slender form is dressed in a costume, painstakingly made by her mother, consisting of a hot pink satin top and matching tulle skirt, gaudily adorned with black sequins. Topping it off is a matching headdress. It, too, is made of pink satin and black sequins, tied in a neat bow under her chin.

I was ten when I posed for this photo, the only picture of me from my childhood where I appeared alone, without any siblings. It was the night of my first dance recital and I felt like the most beautiful little girl in the world. I was utterly self-possessed. That feeling would pass just a few short years later, when puberty came knocking and my body shot up to its present 5'10" height, and, out of nowhere, breasts appeared. These events caused me to develop a permanent slouch and a crushing self-consciousness about my body, which would last throughout my teenage years. I would not feel comfortable in my own skin until eight years later, when I left home for college.

Numerous times in the years since that recital, I have had to call upon my inner "confident ballerina" for the strength to help get me through times of stress and loss and challenges. Challenges as daunting as the suicide of my best friend at twenty-one, handling cancer diagnoses (my own and my husband's), the fire that destroyed our Long Island home in 2009, and the near-fatal illness of our older son eight years ago. But I have also had to summon her on numerous less dire circumstances, like a dreaded root canal procedure, and fleeting panic attacks as I walked into a high school reunion, and a casual get-together with the other mothers from the neighborhood elementary school shortly after we moved to Upper Brookville in 1977. In the latter instance, I actually drove up to the restaurant but could not bring myself to walk through the front door. I got back into my car, drove home, composed myself and returned a few minutes later. "Didn't I see you at the door a few minutes ago?" inquired one of the mothers. "Yes. I forgot something at home," I replied. What I didn't tell her, what I have never admitted to anyone before now, is that what I sorely needed at that particular moment in time was to summon up my inner "confident ballerina." She has always come through for me, that spunky little ballerina with her sunny, optimistic outlook on life.

My stint as a ballerina was brief. But for that one night, I felt like a star, a diva before the term was invented. It is fortunate that no video survives of that recital, for I was an awkward child with poor balance, possibly the result of an ice skating accident at an early age. Or perhaps I was just a child with no natural dancing skills or grace. It didn't matter. What mattered most in that one shining moment in the spotlight was the confidence I felt, the knowledge that I was special and worthy of the attention and applause of the audience beyond the footlights.

I could have danced all night.

Total Loss

It's usually a phone call. Not always, but more often than not, it starts with a phone call. Information is delivered and your life becomes permanently reordered into before and after. The call came on an ordinary November evening in 1967. My best friend's husband asked to speak to my husband. How odd, I thought. The conversation was short and one-sided. When he hung up, my husband relayed the news as gently as possible. Kathy was dead. Her husband had found her in the garage when he came home from work. Asphyxiation. Carbon-monoxide poisoning. Time stopped. Words lost their meaning. My mind tried to wrap itself around the news but failed. I knew she wasn’t happy, but I had no idea of the depth of her despair. In retrospect, I can see that she found herself trapped in a life of dead ends, living someone else’s life, and her response was to end it. My major recollection of this period is one of overwhelming numbness. We went to the funeral. I picked out some drawings of Kathy's to remember her by. They were beautiful pencil sketches of her favorite horses, Carry Back and War Admiral. We met with the widower who showed us the note she had left behind. Life went on. Eventually, the numbness wore off leaving deep sorrow and everlasting regret in its wake.

Forty-two years later, my cell phone rang. It was a glorious August afternoon and I was antique shopping in Damariscotta, Maine, while my husband played golf nearby. "Has anyone reached you yet?" asked the voice on the other end. Instantly, my brain kicked into numbness mode. "Your house burned down last night. Here's the number of the police station. They are awaiting your call." Details emerged slowly through a series of phone calls. There was a big storm around midnight, the same storm that downed over 100 trees in Manhattan’s Central Park. A large tree on our property had split in half, severing electrical power lines that then landed on the roof of the garage, igniting it. The fire reportedly burned out of control for more than two hours. The entire roof had collapsed and every windowpane in the house was broken. We returned to our home on Long Island the following day. The home where we had lived for thirty-two years. The home where we had raised our two sons and entertained friends and family. We were warned, but nothing prepares you for the sight of the smoldering corpse of your family home. It was heartbreaking.

"Total loss," declared the insurance agent on the scene. We were able to scavenge a few items. Our unused tickets to Woodstock. Some porcelain planters. A mirror bought at auction when the estate next door was sold. Miraculously, the two tropical fish in the living room had lived through the blaze. They accompanied us to a nearby hotel in Glen Cove that night. This little triumph pleased my husband no end. But the den attached to the garage was literally gone. There was nothing left to board up. All the mementos and photo albums I cherished had gone up in smoke. Kathy's drawings, so carefully preserved through the years, were gone. It was as if they had never existed.

Life went on. The house was rebuilt and it is spectacular. Friends and family came by to see it last summer. Several made jokes about burning down their own homes so they, too, could build new ones. I faked amusement. Because the floor plan of the new house is identical, I can enter the new den and stare at the wall, now bare, where Kathy's drawings once hung. I see them in my mind's eye. They will exist as long as I am around to remember them.

"Total loss," said the insurance agent. "Total loss," I whisper to myself.