Everything is a dance lesson. Everything makes you a better dancer. But right now I am studying the hardest lesson of all: my dance has been taken away from me.
I've had an accident and can barely walk. Oh, Stella will get her groove back, it's only for a matter of weeks, and then I'll be fine. But every day I cry. I feel like my voice has been taken away from me. Without my dance, I feel like I've had a life-ectomy. My body twitches, my mind sees me dancing, and I yearn to speak again while all I can do is sit, silent.
I watch even more YouTube dance clips than usual. I work on my core. I lie on the floor opening up sensitivity in my back. I draw yet more pictures of dancers. But I was on the verge of a great technical breakthrough and now instead of levelling up, I'm a lump of flesh with rapidly atrophying skills. I am doing my best to adapt. But when one has a dancing heart and the body has to be still, while all one's friends are dancing, it is very hard.
Still, mis compañeros have cheered me up considerably. They check on me and remind me to soak my foot and change my bandage. And one day after lying around all day long, frustrated, depressed, and miserable, my cane and I went to my favourite milonga and everyone made me feel like Scarlett at the barbecue. Because I could not come to the pista, the pista came to me. The chair by my side was never empty, as friend after friend came to chat. My tribe of Lost Boys rallied around me at the slightest dimming of my fairy light.
“[Tinker Bell] was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.
Peter flung out his arms...he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland....
"Do you believe?" he cried.
"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."”
Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, Chapter 13
I cannot fly right now. But I will again, because the inhabitants of my world believe in fairies. They clap for me, and my community's belief in me is my partner in the hardest tanda I have yet danced.