the difference in a day

I met a woman yesterday morning, thanks largely to Keeper the dog who ran toward her down the sidewalk barking ferociously. When I got near enough to grab Keeper's collar and apologize, the woman looked at me and said, "I have to tell you: you inspired me to wear sleeveless clothes."

She went on to tell me how she'd seen me on the plaza and was impressed by my seeming lack of concern for appearance. "Look at her," she commented to a friend, "she's just so OK with who she is."

Then this sweet lady got a little choked up explaining that since she'd contracted Polio as a child, she had always tried to hide her right, somewhat shriveled arm [which I hadn't even noticed till she mentioned it]. As a retired nurse, she'd spent her life caring for others in perhaps their most vulnerable states, while never being able to fully embrace herself.

Apparently seeing me, sleeve free, out in public planted a seed that grew into a coming out with disability party. And there she was, on the sidewalk before me, wearing a tank top. I don't have to tell you that this made my year.

I wanted to hug her. I did hug her. There we were, two strangers on the sidewalk, celebrating what, to many, may seem an insignificant victory. To us, it was the world.

It's not just about sleeves. It's about a deep shift in self perception and identity. It might look like there's just more skin showing, but under that skin is a stronger connection of body with soul.

Before she continued down the street, she said, "You know, it's amazing what a difference you can make by just being yourself."

It's nice to be reminded.

OneArmGirl  

untie

It is hot here.

I know talking about the weather is a copout conversation gimmick, but it's not a bad excuse for why I've been laying around under the air conditioner, getting nothing done.

Keeping limber

And today I woke up with the inklings of a migraine that decided to stay for its usual unwelcome day-long visit. I am trying to explain to Keeper all my very credible reasons for not taking her on a walk, but she continues to look at me, wagging her tail hopefully.

Still, the show must go on. Literally, our aerial show is this Saturday. Surprisingly, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. Just two weeks ago, our piece was hardly a piece at all, and now we've done at least two runs through the whole thing. It's actually a show. It's always magical to see something like that finally come together, seemingly out of chaos.

We've retitled our piece, 'Délier,' which means 'untie' in French. Why? Because our dance is a study in the centrifugal forces of technology in society, working to further isolation of its individual members, leading to the weakening of the communal psyche. OK, actually it comes from one part of the dance where we help each other to untie a knot in the fabric; but far be it from me to squelch interpretation.

Excuse me for a moment...

OK, I'm back. Just had to wipe the sweat out of my underarms. I've definitely reached a new low in the history of this blog.

Can someone bring me an Arnold Palmer? On the rocks?

OneArmGirl  

no disability in dance

How is it possible to have jet lag from a two-hour time difference? This and other scintillating questions will not be answered in this post.

I may be tired because the day after I got home, I was back in the circus studio rehearsing 'A Call to Arms' (yes, that is the title chosen by our director) on the fabrics for three hours.

Here is the thing about fabrics strung from the ceiling on which one is meant to dance: they don't always cooperate the way you would like. As our director says, they are the silent partner...who sometimes throws a moody. But you have to just go with it, smile, and pretend to be entertained by static cling.

Ready or not, the show is next week.

But I have to say, just being in the show is huge validation for the article I wrote a while back for Dancer's Voice. And I was able to procure a copy of said article when I rendezvoused with my sister who is the editorial director. I would publish a link here, but unfortunately it's not published online yet, and it's in Spanish. I can publish a photo I took of the article, and tell you that the title is roughly translated: "There is No Disability in Dance."

Here is the final English draft:

I was born a dancer. I have high arches and a disarmingly natural turnout.

When I was eight years old, my mother enrolled me in a beginning ballet class––a room full of little girls with top knots, in leotards and light pink slippers. I liked leaping across the linoleum floor. My teacher said I was a natural.

I was born with one tiny arm, seven inches long, with three webbed fingers. The doctors said they didn’t know why, but I would be that way for life. So, my leotards always had short sleeves.

I wanted to dance in high school, but my spine decided to curve in several places. So instead, I wore a brace eighteen hours a day for three years––hard plastic cinched around my middle, unbendable from waist to neck, kept me out of dance class.

But in my last year in school, I took the brace off, and signed up for tap and modern. I choreographed a modern piece with three girlfriends for the yearly recital. I contorted over backward, twisting right along with my spine. “You are really flexible,” my teacher said. But I went off to college, leaving dance behind.

Finished with school, I plunged into work at a computer, behind a desk. But one day, a woman came to my desk and asked if I wanted to dance on the back of a moving horse. The first time I tried equestrian vaulting, I was coached by a man who also had one arm. It seemed fate had intervened. “You know you’re an athlete, right?” he said. And I believed him. At twenty-six, with one arm and a twisted spine, I quit my job and moved to California for “horse dancing” with my one-armed coach. “Vaulting is for everyone,” he said. One third of his students had a disability.

For one glorious summer month, I felt more alive than I ever had. But dogged by a mysterious illness, energy sapped, and more and more feverish every day, I felt my happiness slipping away. I had the desire, drive, and talent, but not the ability. It was infuriating. If I was born to dance, why was I hitting obstacles at every turn?

Several years later, I went to see a visiting dance company from Mozambique. Half of the dancers were physically handicapped. One woman had lost both of her legs, but it was her performance that was most riveting––she danced with her voice and her arms. “We don’t think of ourselves as a disability dance company; we’re just dancers,” the director said.

Last year, a friend invited me to an aerial fabrics class. She might as well have offered coke to a recovering addict. Climbing onto the silks was like dancing in air. Hanging by my waist, I released the fabric and I let my torso fall backward in an arc, the momentum swinging me out in a gentle circle, my fingers caressing the linoleum. Freedom. Strength. Beauty. Yes, I was meant for this. 

After twenty years of being a frustrated dancer, I’m finally learning how to dance.  I’m learning that dance is not about making it, but what you make of it. If I can’t do something, I’m learning to ask what I can do. The forms I choose are obscure in the dance world, even challenging the definition, but so am I. There are as many ways to create beauty through movement as there are shapes of people. No arms, no legs, no space––dancers just keep dancing. 

context

I apologize for this week's post delay, but I've been recovering from a marathon of emotionally charged family functions...

Little Gen and I journeyed to the far east...that is, Pennsylvania...last week to meet the other sister's Mexican boyfriend, attend a cousin's wedding, and take an extended family portrait.

Land mines, all, we somehow managed to maneuver through without any fatalities, save my sister's pride when she accidentally flashed her undies for the entire wedding reception hall.

Fortunately our family is more of the passive aggressive variety, so judgments remained comfortably beneath a surface which any casual observer might call congenial.

But while family has the magical talent of stripping away pretense, leaving all of us in our knickers, it also has the potential to re-ground us.

As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was greeted by a melancholic wall of wet jungle air. Here in the east, they call it humidity. My dad was waiting with the car, and crawling into the bed my mom prepared, I felt safe from more than the darkness outside.

Despite running the conversation gauntlet, dodging personal questions about my strange occupations and failing love life, I found myself lulled by the familiar, reminded of who I really am.

I was back in context. It's constantly changing--I'm not what I was nor what I will be--but that's OK because no one else can fill my place. And believe me, when you have a family that is growing exponentially, space is not something you take for granted.

Trying to wrangle the now forty plus members of our family into a frame, the photographer looked at me and asked, "Are you married"? Yes, I am the oldest unmarried maid in my generation, but I only have that distinction because of the now majority of married cousins.

And those married cousins are producing a whole new generation of little people, some of whom are at that ripe age of perceiving difference. Who will show them that oddity is not to be feared, that deformity is just a human condition? I know one, Finneas the Wee Arm, who does the trick.

He's way more comfortable in social settings anyway.

OneArmGirl

Due to recent events in the Middle East, today's post will be delayed. In the meantime, have some cookies....you deserve it.

a small atrocity

There's so much wrong in the world today. But when life's got me a little down, I just think, "Hey, at least I'm not a stuffed toy whose arm got bit off by a dog."

Yes, ironically, it was this poor rabbit's left arm that Keeper decided to attack in a fierce tug of war. By the end, there was not one thread left attached, the wayward arm floating solo across our wooden floor.

There was really no saving it.

But when I saw that, with a large hole gaping where the arm had been attached, the forlorn bunny was being quickly disemboweled one piece of stuffing at a time, I sprang into action to stop the carnage.

Now the semi-stuffed bunny is an amputee, but I hate to say, as Keeper's favorite toy, it's merely a stop gap measure. If it's not his other arm, or a leg, it'll be his ever elusive squeaker...

And what is it with the growing population of one-armed rabbits around here?

OneArmGirl 

friars and frozen yoghurt

So I was at this frozen yoghurt place with the Friars and Co. As if that wasn't spectacle enough––gray cloaked clergymen out on the town with several single gals, one of whom is missing an arm--I decided to challenge Father Daniel to an arm wrestling match.

He won, big surprise.

But then I challenged him to a left arm wrestling match.

He still won, but generously raved about how strong I was.

I am getting stronger, not just in my wee arm, but all over. I certainly have aerial fabrics to thank.

But fittingly concurrent with spring training, I've been doing some baseball cross training with Mountain Guy, who is grooming me for...your guess is as good as mine.

[Haven't we broken up? Yes. Have we been hanging out? Yes. Do I want to talk about it? Not really. Let's just say we still have feelings for each other--love, frustration, anger, loathing; there's really not a feeling we don't have at this point.]

MG is polishing my hitting skills. As a kid, I hit right-handed, swinging the bat with my right wrist facing forward. The longer time followers of this blog may recall my technique at the batting cages a couple years ago.

But thanks to MG's eye and pro baseball level experience, I'm now hitting like a lefty, right hand on the front of the bat, swinging like a tennis backhand. And I really cracked some balls out there (not to be confused with busting balls, which I do on the regular; just ask MG).

Our only outfielder, Keeper the dog, was having a blast chasing after wannabe homers. She was a little less enthusiastic about bringing them back, being frequently distracted by a good roll in the grass.

With the temptation to turn on the hibernating air conditioner around 12pm these days, it would seem summer is nearly here.

"Let's rent a kiddy pool for Memorial Day," Friar Daniel suggests. "We can all sit in it."

Franciscan arm wresting, fabric dancing, one-arm batting? Bring it on, I say.

OneArmGirl