Joey twirls in front of his television reflection, moving oddly. Addy's fuchsia tutu pulled halfway up to his armpits, the silent gray of the off TV humming for him an imaginary child's song, melodic enough to move him into a waddle dance, turning, for another few minutes, until he wants it "off, off Mommy." I leave the page to take off his tutu, and then, return to the page.
On his tutu-less walk to the kitchen, wanting a pen now that he sees is mine, he is distracted by a tiny yellow Nerd, yesterday's inexplicable treat, and eats it. Lovely. No, truly. Really. It's all lovely. Addy is adorned with her own galavanting attire, the cheap gaudy mess that looks as cheap in the packaging as it does on. The tattering hot pink polyester gown, the goldish yellow crown, hinting almost putrid green, candy medallions and feather shoes. She's covered in three years of freedom, uninhibited at home, looking at me like I'm the fabulous center of her tootsie pop universe. How much she knows already. How much she has yet to know. She goes off to dance alone, twirling life around the fingers of her world. I stay on the page.
I often see these times and these moments through the distant lens of a home movie camera, a far-off future. In my mind (not clear and digital but the old fashioned kind, the reel and sliced cuts and vintage overlay of a 1960s home movie - old, but not too old) I watch my children, grown, watching themselves. I study their expressions. The way their eyes shift, looking across or into or down into a place they forgot or buried. I watch intently, the corner of their mouths. Not a tremble, not a movement. I fear that stareless space, when they can't quite celebrate the childhood I provided, can't quite lift themselves away from the distance. I cannot tell if it is sadness or pain or indifference. I cannot tell because I cannot ask them. They are far away inside a place I cannot change, a place inside me I cannot be. I just watch them, seeing parts of who I raised, and watching me, a young woman. Their mother. A figure of life unrecognizable to them. Or am I?
Sitting, I am stunned for a moment. I need to raise myself up and lower myself down. To their life. To their world. I need to dance long and often with my children. But I also must forgive myself when I do not. When, literally, I cannot. I cannot dance because I must write. I cannot dance because I must be a better part of me. It is all alright.
The page calls me. I write. My children call me. I dance. It is all alright. I dance so that they will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that the corner of their mouths turn upward, to the air, like memories gently lifted off the page in child's song. I write so that I will recognize the woman in their home movies. So that I can be there with them, their mother whole, and not absent, an old woman, missing.
Coming from the living room, appearing close, her eyes sparkling, loving what she sees, she says, in her highest and most noble princess voice: "Do you want to dance with me, my Dearest? Will you marry me? Come dance with me." I leave the page. Gracefully, she takes me into that absent movie frame and we fill it with a splendidly silly dance, a marriage ceremony, and childhood love. For ten whole minutes. Until, she removes her crown, her shoes, and opens the refrigerator for her second mid-morning snack.
Joey appears out of his room, unassuming, holding a wooden train piece and a sock. Who is to say where his life has taken him for those ten whole minutes, never to be retrieved again. I hug him when he walks within fingertip reach, because I can.
Because I wrote it here today, I will remember that I danced. My greatest fear is that they won't.
So, I will come back. Return back. Again and again and again. Back to the page. For them, and for myself. And to remember me, dancing.
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