Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Francis just didn’t get it. Spank, drop, step. “Three steps!” I wanted to scream. “How can you *not* get this?” For three months, she just didn’t get it. This eighteen-year-old senior could solve Trig problems, but she couldn’t will her body to repeat three dance steps.

The steps kept evolving. I tried every metaphor and trick I could muster. These aren’t drawbacks. This is a passe that you fall out of. These aren’t drawbacks. This is walking backwards. These aren’t drawbacks. This is scooping peanut butter, closing the lid, putting away the jar. No matter the metaphor, no matter the number of demonstrations, no matter the number of repetitions: Francis would make three steps that never equaled spank, drop, step.

In Modern, the problem wasn’t three steps. The problem was five seconds. Miss Sarah said those five seconds took thirty minutes–thirty unsuccessful minutes.

We stood and vented and worried and compared stories as Terri listened. Terri doesn’t know a plie from a brise’. Terri has never worn ballet shoes, tap shoes, or tights. Terri has never danced across the studio. I don’t know that Terri’s ever walked the entire length of the studio. There are tens of steps on the marley floor where Terri’s feet have never walked. Terri is the reason Francis is making peanut butter sandwiches in tap class.

Today, Francis did not walk into my studio.  She danced into my studio.  Five steps.  She kept repeating five, not-quite-perfect Modern steps.  I could not say for sure, but perhaps Miss Sarah’s five seconds were composed of the five steps I saw Francis dancing.

Thirty minutes later, we reached drawback practice.  Every other student quickly beat out the rhythm of those three steps.  Francis stood next to the ballet barre.  Though everyone else could both complete the steps and balance without aid, she held the barre with her left hand, rose onto the balls of her feet, and lifted her right foot off the floor.  Spank.  Her right foot brushed back against the floor toward her left ankle.  Drop.  Her left heel dropped to the marley floor.  Step.  Her right foot, having been balanced in the air for the duration of one tap step, stepped decidedly to the floor.

I completely erupted into an applause.  After three months of working, Francis completed a drawback on the first try.

But she didn’t stop there.

Every three steps composed a drawback.   Every three steps across a thirty foot studio.  Francis must have completed fifteen drawbacks!

Within five minutes, my three-months-behind student had not only conquered her nemesis-of-a-step, but she was completing a more complicated form of the step.  Every other student had already learned Cincinnaties.  Not three steps, but five: I likened Cincinnaties to making a peanut butter sandwich.  Scoop the peanut butter; close the lid; spread the peanut butter; close the sandwich; take it to the table.

Today, three months of work and years of my on training were left wanting in the face of one woman’s single prayer, and Francis is making peanut butter sandwiches in tap class!

A Recovering Pessimist

Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed that the best way to have a happy life was to expect for everything to go horribly awry whenever that something got the chance.  Every test she took, she expected to be marked as an F, though she cried if it received anything under an A-.  Every friend she made, she expected to disappoint her. Every achievement she earned, she expected to be forgotten.  Every boy she dated… wait, that never happened.  Every boy she wanted to date, she imagine that he saw her as a fat blob.

Then one day, that boy she expected to date wanted to date her.

Then things got worse.  Every word he spoke was a comparison, and she failed.  Every place he went was a memory of someone else.  Every plan they made had been done before.  Every feeling she felt, he didn’t feel.

Then things got worse in a different way.  She pined

and pined some more

and pined a pathetic amount of pine-age.

Then, things got better.  She decided to finally play the part of Abraham in the story for which he’s most famous.  He had to kill the thing that had become his life, but she did things a little differently. She decided to, in effect, run away (thus ending her current life).  She applied to a very exclusive program–a 2 year commitment during which time participants couldn’t date or wear fashionable clothes or attend the church of their choice.  Well, perhaps it was assumed that participants would want to attend the required church, but I think that was hardly the case.

Then, things got complicated.  She failed a class.  She didn’t have experience.  She wasn’t Baptist.  She was too thin, which she found hysterical.  She had a bipolar grandfather.  She couldn’t control every aspect of her surroundings.

Then… she saw the ram.

Then, she smiled.

In high school such phenomena were considered almost sacred.  Zach used to sit in front of her–turned around in his desk–and stare/joke/humiliate her into grinning.  At dance, she was always told to relax her forehead and stop scowling.  At home, her parents told her that boys would date her if she would just stop scaring them.

Here at the cross-roads of pessimist and not-quite-so-pessimistic-ist, I find that this girl is me.

It may seem like the strangest thing.  I used to believe that always-smiling people were completely fake and must have an underlying mental or emotional condition that kept them from facing reality.  If people faced reality, they would smile as seldom as I did.

I am not Joel Osteen.  I do not have a smile plastered to my face.  My natural face falls into a expressionless, straight mouthed emoticon, but… Zach no longer has to tell inappropriate jokes to turn up the sides of my mouth.  In fact, I haven’t seen Zach in over 6 years, and I can still smile.

I would call myself a “recovering pessimist” because I am hardly an optimist.  Realism is a seldom praised worldview, but I would claim it over romanticism  any day.  See, realism does not expect the worst; it expects what would or could happen in my world.

In my world, marriage works.  My husband has hurt me, and I have hurt him, BUT neither of us desires to hurt the other person.  Daniel loves me.  Even when he asks me the same question about finances or my choice of clothes for the umpteenth time, he loves me.  He likes me.  He wants the best for me.  He doesn’t cheat.  He doesn’t abuse me.  He seeks God. I am not naive.  I’m honest.  In my world, it would be completely against his character for him to negate those truths.  It’d be like my deciding to love cats or roaches or driving slowly.  Things like that just could not happen.  It’s not realistic.

In my world, God is.  He’s proven His presence.  I have been hurt.  I have hurt myself by living life as an open wound, but even in the hurt and the decay of my life, God is.  He’s been my only friend, my Daddy, my confidant, my sanity, my healer, my assurance, my guidance counselor, my agent, my banker, and my attorney.  Even in the times I let the consequences of sin–mine and others–hurt me, He protected me from becoming the druggy or whore or invalid I could have been.

In my world, life is not rose-colored.  People die.  Things are stolen.  Children are hurt in unspeakable ways.  Tests are failed.  Speeding tickets are issued.  Alarm clocks break.  PMS sucks.  I am alive.  Daniel is beside me.  God is.