The dance

Years ago, and well into my seventh month of pregnancy in New York City, it occurred to me one day that, as I would be unable to run from a fast predator, I was lucky not to run into an urban panther. These weekly blogs will consider women's lives from the perspective of one who is now older.

When my son was in the high school jazz band, I attended the school’s winter concert. Two years earlier, I’d attended much the same concert when my daughter sang with the madrigal singers. Each concert ended with an interpretive dance -- in fact, the same interpretive dance, performed to the Carol of the Bells by high school girls in long white skirts and holding electric candles.

It could have been pretentious, but their lovely, hopeful energy was too poignant to be mocked. I felt their youth like a tangible being -- not naive, but truly innocent of how life pitched and turned. I wanted to call out after them, “Hang on tight!”

Not all of them would make it, I knew. Some would founder on the obvious -- drugs, drinking. Some would get too hurt by sex, or, seeing how vulnerable it could make them, would use it like a battle lance while shutting themselves inside an emotional coat of mail.

Others would get farther. Some would live a tragedy, lost a breast, lose a child. Those remaining would look around, surprised or guilty, wondering why they’d been spared. And years from now, everything they thought they knew would be in question; I hoped they’d be flexible enough to withstand that when it came. The very luckiest and sturdiest would make it all the way, with some piece of herself, in white, still recognizable.

I would not have told them any of this. They needed their strong youth, with bright unknowing eyes, to launch themselves into life. It’s not that we wouldn’t do it if we knew what was ahead, or even that we’d do it differently, Rather, it is more that not knowing helped us collect experience unburdened by suspicion. Regret, harder to elude, was heavy enough.

The concert took place in a former chapel. I don’t regularly sit in church buildings anymore, and perhaps the building itself brought a parable to mind -- one about seed being sown, landing all over the place, and the different fates of the seeds. When I was listening as a little girl in church, the priests always tried to put a moral on it. “So make sure you are not a pile of rocks, but deep, rich soil for the seed to sprout.”

Even as a child, I thought it more interesting and to the point to ponder the carelessness of the sower. But I think they’d missed the real meaning. There is no additional moral needed to this story. It is a helpful illustration of the randomness of life, a reminder that can comfort us when we want to know, “Why?” and the cosmic answer is, “No reason, really.”