I write from time to time on this blog about the Glorious Miss M., who thrills us all at DanceSport Academy with her talent, her commitment, and her kindness. We've watched her grow up from this little girl, snapped by my camera nearly three years ago, to the young lady who joins us adults on Thursday evenings in the intermediate group classes—not to learn (she knows this stuff already), but to help us find our dancing ways. She gets a little look in her eye, as you can see. It's not mischief, exactly. It's, well, let's call it The Miss M. Sparkle Elixir.
Yesterday evening, while we sat on the couch together waiting for our lesson, Miss M. asked me about our time away in Beach Haven. I began to speak of
dolphins and sun. "Oh, yes," she interrupted (however politely). "I read that on your blog." (How boring can one person be, I thought of myself at the time.) Miss M. then proceeded to explain how, every day when she comes home from school, she heads to the computer to find out what I blogged. She was smiling when she said it. There might have been some irony there. Still, just in case she's reading today, this one is for you, Miss M.
Miss M. is competing this weekend at the
Philadelphia Festival DanceSport Championships. I'm sending her all of my love. If the judges know what's right and fair, she'll come home bedazzled with blue ribbons.
"You look happy," I told a friend yesterday. We were at the dance studio, a dark storm lashing against the window glass.
"Of course," he said.
I asked him why, half a joke, a plea for sun on a rumbling day. He began (it was easy for him) to enumerate. Youth was on his list. Health. Love. Opportunity. Dance. Not riches, he said. He wouldn't want riches. Riches wouldn't make him happy.
A little girl came in, next to dance. She put on her shoes, he bowed to her, they walked down the hall, arms linked together. I went out into the storm and for the rest of that night, my friend's happiness was mine, his celebration of what we have right now, this moment.
I've been a big Sharon Begley fan for years now, and so when I saw that she had written a feature
Newsweek story titled "Can You Build a Better Brain?" (January 10 and 17, 2011) I flipped the pages and settled in.
After reviewing all the things that don't have any
proven tie to enhanced brain intelligence (those vitamins, the Mediterranean diet, statins, ibuprofen), Begley begins to center in on things that are known to help—exercise, meditation, and complex videogames. You have to read the whole article to get the complete and utter gist, but I'm going to quote from the paragraph that made me happiest of all:
... taking up a new, cognitively demanding activity—ballroom dancing, a foreign language—is more likely to boost processing speed, strengthen synapses, and expand or create functioning networks.
Ballroom dancing—did you see that folks? It ain't just about the glitter and the gloves.
Speaking, however, of glitter and gloves, that gorgeous woman in the photograph here is our own Cristina, of DanceSport Academy, whose little Eva is turning two this month. If learning the rumba doesn't keep us young, this wondrous sprite of a child is bound to do the trick.
of one of the best amateur dancers the nation has ever seen. It was a privilege to share the stage with her during yesterday's showcase rehearsal.
At the dance studio today, it was all of us. It was, at the heart and pulse, Cristina, who brought her baby—six weeks old and already dreaming music. The baby's long and perfect fingers sculpted the air. Her soul absorbed our love. Her grace was our grace as Scott took her on and cradled her within his rise and fall.
You don't dance at my age to become a ballroom star. You don't dance with illusions, when you dance with Jean. You dance because you trust the others who gather with you there, because they have, in so many ways, become a family. I danced a lousy jive today, and I also held a baby. I hugged a radiant, brave, and dear new mother, and I looked around—at the good in us, the awe, the tender.
New life is new hope. The music plays beyond us. The music is dreamed by the young.
Miss M sounds like a real sweetheart. How lucky you are to know her.
Miss M reads your blog, what a treasure. Good luck to her