| Sunny Side Up May 5, 2004 � 2004, Kathleen Gibson My mother's bones You have your mother's bones, people tell me. But my mother's bones have betrayed her. They're old and dry. Her spine curves like a tulip stem. Her beautiful head, with the face that reminds me of Queen Elizabeth's, is bent too. To talk to anyone except children, she must look not straight ahead, but up. Osteoporosis and arthritis have robbed my mother's bones. I think about those bones, and pray not to have them. My mother never danced in her life, not once. "Let's dance, Mommy," I'd say, as a child. When I pulled her around the kitchen she giggled, and in a fake singsong accent protested, "No sanks, I don't sink so! Ven I dance I svet so. And ven I svet, I stink so. No sanks, I don't sink so!" I didn't grow up dancing either, likely for the same reasons I thought my mother never did. I never learned how. I wasn't allowed. My church frowned on it. But when Mom was in her early eighties I told her about a stage play I was in that required me to learn the waltz and the polka. I'm no good, Mom, I said. I have an extra left foot. Truly. I can't even dance in private! Not that I haven't tried. One evening I asked the Preacher to dance with me in our living room. I'm not the only one with two left feet, I found. We landed in a laughing heap on the sofa. Those uncoordinated feet were what made me leave the stage and move into the prop shop in our community theater productions. But a while ago I dreamed I was dancing with a dark-haired man. Someone who cared for me very much, it seemed, though he was faceless. We floated across the stage like we'd been granted wings. I felt that my body was made of air, and someone else was moving me with all the grace and loveliness of lights twinkling on water. And then I woke. Too soon. My mother listened to all my talk about dancing. Giggled, got very serious and said. "I was always afraid to dance. Afraid that if I started, I'd never be able to stop." You could have toppled me with a toothpick. I have my mother's bones, people say. But I don't want my mother's bones. Not her calcium deficient, crumbling, arthritic ones. I long instead for the strength of my mother's spiritual bones. Though she's crumpling physically, she has the strongest spirit of almost anyone I know. Her spirit dances, though her body can't, and it will dance into eternity, with the grace and loveliness of lights twinkling on water, just like I danced in my dream. She'll dance with someone who loves her more than his own life. She'll dance with the Son of God, the partner who gave her so much grace and beauty on earth, in spite of her bad bones. And she'll never have to stop. You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
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