Farmers’ daughters picked stones and sweet corn; there was no time or resources for ballet classes. Summer evenings found me on my city cousin’s bed, her room bordered in ballet slippers, as she performed perfect pirouettes. Such form, muscles holding, strained yet steadied, disciplined.
I look in the mirror now, the flabby thirties staring back. Too long I haven’t “cared for myself, my own vineyard” (Song of Songs 1:6). It is time to tend to the vines, caring, training. So I am rowing, tightening, training muscles, holding, releasing. The vineyard is beginning to yield more fruit.
Days full of family, children, learning swirl about. I endeavor to choreograph a graceful ballet, holding my soul muscles in form: stilling my tongue, keeping in step with the rhythms of grace, disciplining my mind, my moments… my mothering.
Slowly, painfully, my soul muscles are strengthening, like my sagging abdomen, the spiritual mirroring the physical.
It is time to care for the vineyard.
For it’s the perfect place to dance.
