Time to Jump
I am not an aerialist.
I am not a dancer.
I am not a producer.
But if I have come to realize anything about my life it's that I am most definitely a risk taker.
I am not quite sure where it started and I am not quite sure where it will take me. I have been this way ever since I can remember and I seem to get myself in some of the most precarious of situations. Admittedly, sometimes it gets to be a bit much and many times I do feel in over my head. But I know the value of learning how to swim. Besides I would like to think that my actions will eventually encourage and inpsire my daughters as they face different paths in their own personal roads ahead.
If you had told me at the beginning of last year that I would not only be pulling together my own show but also dancing in it and hanging from a lyra, well, I would have told you that you were crazy. I have always wanted to see something different produced on the Nashville stage but never had one ounce of desire (aka guts) to make that happen all by myself. However, when my friend Laura shared a similar vision of producing a such a show, to create a unique most-memorable experience, I knew that I could never say 'no'. Laura, being an amazing woman and musician- who by no doubt can handle anything that crosses her path, was an easy fit for me and the opportunity to work with her was too precious to pass up.
In peeling off the layers and diving in with Laura to create this show, naturally many things began to unfold. I had decided early on that I did not want to perform a hula hoop number and opted for something different, new and out of the ordinary... at least for me. So I opted for not only more numbers but ones that would bring movement to my body but through a different light.
As I have steadily trained these past few months, it has become quite clear, especially in being surrounded by a cast of twenty-somethings, that my almost 38 year old body does not move like theirs... by any means. Yes, I find myself to be the "old" one in the group. And while age has never been a forethought in my mind before, this has been one of the most daunting realizations and I see now why my mother tried to hang on to "29"" for so many years. It takes me a million times longer to learn things that they can just do in one or two tries. Their bodies bend and meld while mine creaks and cracks. Yes, my range of motion is somewhat limited and by no means is grace my middle name.
While I have put months into my practice, the perfectionist in me feels as if I could use many more. At night I fall asleep running through my numbers in my head. I close my eyes and automatically feel the sway of the lyra. I have to open my eyes so I don't get too dizzy. And of course I sit there and wonder, where is MTV's "Make me an Aerialist for 38 year olds" when you need it most?
I am more excited about this show than I have ever been about any show that I have watched or even participated in. But I am also more terrified of the stage than I have ever been before. The only phsyical feeling I can aquate it to is the time I was at the top of my first slope about to jump off. It was absolutely terrifying, but I could not make my friends walk down the slope via the 2 mile cross country path back to the lodge like I had made them done the day before... yes, I now had to jump.
As I am getting ready to jump I hope you will be there with me in support. And I hope that my being there encourages you to try something new, maybe to even try something that terrifies you. I often worry that we spend our lives away defining ourselves by who we are not- or what we cannot do. But I am a risk taker. Now tell me, what are you?
