It’s been a full month since I’ve written a word, not an entry in my journal and no idea what I’ll write for my column in the Hawker. Nothing more interesting than a grocery list has come from my pen. It once was a lazy malaise, it became self doubt and now it looms as an oppressive fear. Can I write again? Am I even capable of putting words on paper, words that will make you laugh or even smile? I don’t know but I do know that I am not laughing much myself these days. I probably can’t ask you to join me in the laughter when, truth be told, I have lost my smile. To be perfectly honest, the only thing that comes easy to me is aging. With everything else, there has always been effort counter-balanced with a profound love of inertia. Particularly difficult in my life is anything that requires balance, coordination, physical strength or even the smallest measure of grace. When I was six I went to a Saturday morning ballet class and at the end of the term there was a dance recital. My father, an avid amateur photographer, snapped picture after picture of the event. In each picture I was on the wrong foot. The line of little tutu clad girls had their right foot forward, I had my left. They turned clockwise, I turned counter clockwise. There it was, captured in black and white, frozen as eternal evidence of my lack of grace. The other girls’ faced the audience with their eyes raised angelically heavenward while I with my back to the audience looked over my shoulder trying to figure out what went wrong. I heard the audience titter, I knew they were laughing at me. As the pictures of my recital were passed around at family gatherings, I was laughed at and hugged in merriment by aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I was a roaring success as a comic if not a ballerina. This is who I was, this is who I am. I will continue writing; continue sharing the view from over my shoulder. I will figure out what went wrong and I will find my smile. After all, it is impossible to smile on the outside without feeling a bit better on the inside and I am more than ready to do that.
There is a commercial on TV that shows a mom trying to make her nerdy son into an athlete...he doesn't have the talent (I haven't figured out why it's the mom and not the dad?????) He ends up singing a solo in a musical performance. The point being we all have
ReplyDeletetalent...somewhere. We just have to find it. You are a writer and a good one. You have just gone through a very stressful time in your life and that would depress any of us. Of all the people in our class and in the blogging world that I dabble in, your writing is the most enjoyable. It says something. It means something. It has comedy and it has truth. For you not to write and deprive me of that enjoyment would be cruel.