Age and Flexibility

Age and Flexibility

By Miriam Weiser

I’m sitting on a hard folding chair that is threatening to crack under my heavy weight and I’m watching the children run and play. I see their arms flailing and their legs flying. They don’t think twice or look down to watch their step. They don’t take a deep breath or take a moment to contemplate each time they bend. They don’t check for cracks on the sidewalk or steps at the curb. They run and twirl freely. Their bodies are flexible as jelly fish and I wish I had that.

Not their bodies. I am too old and mature. What I wish I had was their flexibility. I have seen people of all ages and stages run and jump and let their bodies fly in freedom. I can only imagine feeling that uninhibited. I can imagine it only because I’ve dreamed it many times.

In my dreams I glide like an angel (ghost?) along the streets, up or down the stairs, many stairs, flights and flights of them circling like a cylinder, round and round and up as far as the eye could see. No human could do that as gracefully as me, in my dreams.

I remember when, as a chubby little girl, I made the decision to try and teach myself how to make a cartwheel. Was I thinking that it would help me become nimbler? Would it help me become thinner? It pains me to come to the realization that decades later I am still doing stupid things to try and change things about my body. But not to worry. I never got past the raising my hands high part. I could do that well.

We are always taught that if you keep trying and keep working at something you will make it. I kept trying to teach myself how to make a cartwheel at the age of eleven and I didn’t make it. I could not lift my feet off the floor, especially when my hands were in the air. Sure, if I held on to the wall or a very strong piece of furniture, I could lift both feet at the same time, probably, a quick inch.

I never really enjoyed watching dances because they made me feel inept. It was the same thing every time. Skinny hands waving this way and that, thin bodies bending front and backwards and feet swishing softly over the floors. It was not interesting or entertaining to me.

It was uninteresting to me until I watched a few dances in which there were a couple of heavy girls. I was fascinated. I bolted upright in my seat in the auditorium where this play was being performed. I could not take my eyes off the stage. There was a strict rule about not taking pictures or video, and the way I am with following rules, I did not dare to take my cell phone out of my bag. I could not get enough of watching these two or three overweight girls hurtling their graceful bodies across the stage. They didn’t just swish and bend.

They jumped high. They fell low, all the way down, and shot up again in an instant, twirling and bending and falling again. Sure, they were young, teenagers, but still. Call me amazed and astounded. This was more than five years ago, and I still think about those dances that rocked me off my pedestal of condescension towards dance in particular.

At the time, I felt transported. It was taking me way back to my own adolescence where, who knows, had I been given the chance, I might have become a dancer myself. I am always joking to my younger nieces that I am a graceful dancer. I never show them, of course. There’s always another reason.

The reasons I don’t show anyone how I dance range from my feet hurting, which is most of the time, to there’re too many people around, to I’m too tired now.

The truth is I probably could make a graceful one-and-a-half-minute show of graceful dance, I do it at my children’s weddings, but it costs me. At my age and my weight and due to my lack of practice, I do admit I need a lot of help in that arena. I would love to go to a dance class.

For one, I could use the exercise. Two, I think it would be fun. Also, I could use the social experience. Who can’t, am I right?

To feel the exhilaration of moving without fear of falling. Gliding around freely accompanying beautiful music.

When I was just out of school and before I got married, I attended a dance class. Shulamis taught us steps to popular tunes, and when my friends and I would go to a wedding we’d be so happy and proud to joyously show off our knowledge of the steps we had learned. We had so much fun.

Being flexible is a blessing many take for granted. Many don’t consider it a blessing until their joints act up or they are sitting for hours because it takes extra effort to stand up and go. I used to walk all over the city when I was younger. I walked for an hour, two sometimes just to get from point a to point b or just for the sake of moving. I didn’t run miles, like some of my friends do. I believe that’s crazy. But that’s just my own opinion. I don’t have problems with my knees, thank God, but I want to keep it that way.

A cardiologist once told me that running for long periods of time or if you run regularly for years ends up being terrible for the knees. So, I’ll skip that, thank you very much.

But I do like to keep moving.

And I do want to become a little bit more flexible if I can.

I will watch the children and while I won’t aspire to be exactly like them, I would very much like to take some of their carefree attitude, their flexibility, and emulate them.

Most things that we learn on a daily basis is from the adults, or those older than us.

Sometimes, we have to take a step back and look at the children in front of us, the children we once were, and remember that there’s still a child in each of us, no matter our age, our stage, and our imperfect impressions of ourselves.