what's old is new again...

I had a talk, a very brief talk, a month or so ago with a friend I have known since the 4th grade. I told her that I thought I had lost my funk and I think that I had left it in 1996. She knew what I was was talking about. She is an artist and back in the day, I was an artist. She actually paints and has a solid medium for her art, but I was a dancer. She and I had both lost our artistic way for many years due mainly to the fact that we needed to make some money to support ourselves in this world.

I have thought often of my past when I was a dancer, my younger, thinner, more flexible past. I learned the stylings of Twyla Tharp, George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham. I had the privilege of dancing onstage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I earned a degree in dance and taught briefly after college. Times were tough when I was a dance instructor and I had to look for my income elsewhere. I never lost the passion to dance, just the time and the energy and the ability to touch my toes.

So, my friend recently lost her job and because she wasn't in the corporate world anymore, she started painting again. She hasn't lost her touch. I bought one of her paintings to hang in my daughters' bedroom.

I spoke to her about my yearning to find my way again and about her finding her path. I was a bit jealous of her ability to get right back into it. She lives alone and has more freedoms than I do. Have you ever tried to do a pirouette with a 5 year old asking you to help her practice writing her Q's and a cattle dog nipping at your spinning heel? It's not so easy.

Shortly after I spoke with her, a rather interesting turn of events happened. My daughter Zoe's dance teacher (who knew that I was an ex-Martha Graham aficionado) asked me if I would be interested in teaching a modern dance class at her studio. Her current instructor was leaving to start a new life as a married lady in the suburbs of Chicago. Hhhmmmmm? Could I do it? Would I remember how to teach and WHAT I was supposed to teach? I told her simply "I don't know."

I went home and slept on the idea, tossed it around to my husband. He has never known me as a dancer. Sure I can wiggle it around fine in our living room with him, but he doesn't know the dancer that I had been in my past. I emailed Zoe's teacher the next day and told her YES, I was interested!

Sometimes our past is right around the corner, peeking out to see if we are still interested. If the right moment happens upon you, you may be able to grab your past and reinvent it for the present...just remember to point your toes.