Joining Lisa Jo Baker, aka, The Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday today.  Check out my post below and click over to her page for more really cool posts rendered in a five minute dash!

Graceful . . .

When I was a young girl, I took African Dance lessons.  It remains, in my mind, as one of the best times in my life.

I was good.  No, ahem, I was goooooooood, honey!  I had so much grace, freedom, poise, purpose and passion in my movements.  I was the girl with the long brown frame who used her whole body to make each movement beautiful, as if the movement itself was just a part of my natural rhythm and sway.

I continued with the dance troop for years.  Followed it everywhere it went.  Danced downtown at festivals.  Danced in plays.  Danced at Spirit Square.  Made the paper.  Mama still has the clipping.  Me on the front, in the African garb looking all authentic and official.

And then classes were offered right up the street from my house.  It was like I belonged to the dance and the dance belonged to me.  We were meant for each other.  That troop and moving my body like that, it became a release.  It helped me see the beautiful parts about myself and love them, own them, appreciate them.

Then Mama and Daddy divorced.  So many things changed.  Mama didn’t want to live in that house anymore, even though Daddy had long left and the air was freer to breathe in since he took so much of the tension with him.

So we moved.

And I stopped dancing.

I haven’t been able to dance like that ever since.

And believe me I have tried.  ;0)

And even though I sometimes think that all I will ever have are the memories of a time when I was a great dancer, all graceful and sure . . . when I hear the sound of a drum beat, I am reminded that with all the things I lost back then, I never lost my gracefulness.