Up on a pedestal

Hearing today that a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was torn down amid protests made me incredibly sad—sad that the reputation of a man who fought against the KKK and pushed for the passage of the 15th Amendment is once again tarnished; sad that so many people don't know and don't care about the history of who he was and what he did; sad that so many people don't allow for someone to ever be better than the worst thing they ever did and don't allow for someone's growth as a human and rise from an average life to a heroic one. If change is what we hope to effect, then nothing can stand more strongly for that change than those who embraced it and fought for it, both in themselves and others. I wrote the following blog the day before the statue was torn down:

I felt like drawing a hero, so I drew (or at least attempted to draw) Ulysses S. Grant.  My only other piece of "artwork" lately has been drawing rainbows, stars, and balloons on my sneakers, so drawing isn't my forte, but I've been reading in depth about Grant since December and am struck every day by the qualities of a leader he so fully embodied.  He led by example, he led with humility, he led with honesty, he admitted and learned from his mistakes, he was open to growth and adjusting his ideas, and as President he fought for the peace and equality that his winning the war enabled.  He made mistakes, and of course he was not perfect, as no one is, but part of his immense strength was being able to admit those mistakes, learn from them, and figure out how to keep going forward without giving up.  As the subject of Civil War statues has come up recently in the national conversation, I've been thinking a lot about the statues of Grant with which I am familiar: his equestrian statues in Brooklyn, Chicago, Philadelphia, and as part of the Grant Monument in D.C.  In all four cases, the statues are so high that one cannot even fully appreciate his facial expression.  He sits upon his horse multiple stories in the air, on a pedestal, unreachable and as seemingly emotionless as the stone out of which he's carved, despite the intricacies that are sculpted there but only fully visible via binoculars or photography.  Doesn't placing our heroes on pedestals, both literal and figurative, prevent them from fully representing what they are: examples of real, flawed human beings just like us who fully lived up to their potential to change and do good in the world?  Wouldn't a true-to-life-sized statue of the 5'8" Grant, in which one could see both the determination and the sadness in his weary eyes admitting of the hell that war is, even when necessary, serve as a better monument to a man who should inspire us all to be better than our failures and rise to the occasion?

I've never cared for Spider-Man or Superman or any other superheroes with special powers, but I've always loved Batman, because he was just a flawed human being who did what he had to do to save people.  That's what our heroes should be.  That's what Ulysses S. Grant was, though he wore a military uniform (frequently a private's uniform rather than a general's) and floppy hat rather than a batsuit and cowl.

Draw one of your heroes today.  It's okay if the drawing is flawed and unfinished.  So are our true heroes.  And that's what makes them so heroic.

Today I dance

When I lay on the floor of the dance studio after hearing a horrific bone-cracking snap, knowing something in my foot or ankle was broken but not knowing what as the pain engulfed the whole lower extremity, all I could think was “What if I can never dance again?” The furthest thing from my thoughts as I tried not to have a complete meltdown in front of everyone, tried not to think that I had just lost the biggest part of my identity and biggest passion in life with one misplaced jump, was that there might be a silver lining to my injury.

Now, not fully recovered (yet) but able to do light dancing, I’ve found that silver lining. At a time when I see dedicated dance friends struggling to find their motivation to take class every day in their home with the teacher on a computer or phone screen, with no in-person peers to push or encourage them, I find motivation pouring out of me. Because I can dance. Because two-and-a-half months ago, before I’d found the best orthopedic foot surgeon in the business, the urgent care doctor looked at me with pity and instructed me to take deep breaths as she told me I might never be able to dance at the same level again and wouldn’t even get off crutches for 2 months. Because she was wrong.

There will come a day that this body can’t dance anymore. But that day is not today. So today, no matter what, I dance. 

Dancing through life alone together

In my little corner of the world, the dividing day between "life as normal" and "coronavirus life" was Monday, March 16th.  The Thursday before, with news that school would be canceled beginning Monday, my husband and I realized we were in the minority in not stockpiling approximately 234,568,000,001 rolls of toilet paper, and so we spent two hours that evening driving around trying to find any. 

But, that accomplished, life seemed to go on semi-normally for the next few days. Though I canceled my weekend self-run adult ballet class because of a combination of student worries and an abundance of caution on my part, I still taught a full children's class that weekend for a studio, and I hoped to get my own class back up the following week.  I even went to a crafting get-together that Sunday.  Sunday night, the order came that gyms had to run at 50% capacity and, at mine, members had to sign up ahead of time to ensure that.  With a text off to my boxing gym to ensure my place in class the following evening, my predominant feeling going to bed Sunday night was one of relief that my gym was staying open.

Then, near noon Monday morning, gyms were ordered to shut down by three that afternoon.  That's when things got real to me.  Being forced to scavenge for toilet paper is one thing, but not being able to go to a gym (or teach ballet, as the "gym" order included all exercise studios) dissolved me into tears.  Even my apartment complex's fitness room, with its single treadmill, bike, and elliptical, shut down immediately.  Just over a week after I had gotten the OK from my orthopedic surgeon to use the elliptical, ditch the knee crutch for boxing, and start intensely rehabbing my foot, ankle, and leg, I was back to being limited to exercises I could do at home and walking.

And yet now, a little over a week later, it is with some guilt that I admit I am perhaps in the highest spirits I've been in since we moved—and that is because of the creativity and generosity of artists around the country.  I have taken live ballet class from New York City every single day, sometimes twice a day, in the last week.  Every day, new artists add themselves to the ever-growing list of those giving their talents to bring dancers together to maintain both their physical and mental health in this time.  Most of them ask in return only for a donation to a charity from those with the means to do so. They profit nothing from their time but the sense of bringing sunshine and a sense of togetherness to a community that relies on space and movement to feel whole.

The gift of art and sharing isn't limited to the dance community.  Every night when he finishes work, my husband sits on the couch and loads the daily video from one of his favorite musical artists, Ray Wilson.  Tom Chapin and the Chapin Sisters stream daily live concerts from their living room, and Esther the Wonder Pig and her family read story books once a week.  Even I got to teach an online ballet class and hope to do more.

While talking to my mom this morning, I told her it feels weird and makes me feel guilty that I don't feel like much has been taken away from me personally with the quarantine. To the contrary, during this time, I've gained use of my broken foot, gained back much of the muscle and balance I had lost, gained back my daily ballet classes, gained back one of my favorite NYC ballet teachers, and gained back a sense of belonging to the dance community (not to mention actually gaining a job teaching when this is all over).  But today in ballet class (streamed from the apartments of ABT principal dancers Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside), Boylston said something along the lines of how we should all be grateful that we are able to be here moving today, sharing this with each other, because not everyone has this; not everyone can do this.

So for right now, I'm going to let go of my guilt and just feel grateful. I can move. I can share the gift of dance, whether as a teacher, student, or just fellow dance community member.  It's not money, or masks, or ventilators, but art keeps us sane, and if I can give back what I've gotten out of it, then maybe that's the way I can make a difference.

Plus, it's been sunny outside all week. In Grand Rapids. So I feel like I've seen Bigfoot.

Broken foot observations

This week, I got the okay from my orthopedic surgeon to ditch the crutches and walk on my boot.  Being able to walk the last few days, even with a cane, has come with one of the strongest feelings of liberation I've felt in my life.  I can do things for myself.  I can get up off the couch and get myself a glass of water or warm up my coffee.  I can do our cat's litter.  I can put down his water bowl without spilling half of it.  My armpits aren't chafed any more from crutch use, my knees don't look like an elephant's from crawling, and I don't have to drag myself around the apartment.  And equally important, I can start getting muscles in my lower leg and ankle back.  A little over a week ago, my back and hip were in near-constant pain from movement compensations and tight or strained muscles, and I had shooting pains down my leg, along with a return of a recurring lung infection that comes with wheezing, weird noises when I breathe, and a vibrating feeling in my lungs against my ribs.  I was depressed and dejected, hadn't been able to leave the apartment on my own in a month, hadn't seen the sun in about as long, and was in serious need of a happiness infusion.  Which is what I got in the form of my parents visiting for a few days to take me out into the world and do things I hadn't been able to do lately.  Not only did they bring the sun with them (not just figuratively but literally—the sun shone during their entire visit for the first time I can remember) but they also took me to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, the art museum, a park by the river to walk on my iWalk knee crutch for what was my first real walk in a month, a movie, meals out, and, finally, my doctor's appointment where I got the ok to walk again.  It was a good few days.

So now that I've had several days back in the world of being more independent and mobile and am no longer in pain or wheezing, I've been able to look back at my time in crutches (and my ongoing time in the iWalk for boxing purposes since I don't yet have the green light to put weight on my foot during boxing), and I have some observations from the last month, both injury-related and not:

1. The Grand Rapids phenomenon I have dubbed "shopping right-of-way" does not make allowances for the physically disabled or impaired.

There's this thing about people shopping in Grand Rapids that's different from any city I've ever been in.  When I first moved here and experienced it for the first time, I thought it was an isolated occurrence.  Then it happened again and again, and my husband even commented on it.  In the months we've been here it's become a running joke between us because it's so common and so ridiculous: When one person is standing in an aisle looking at an item and another person is approaching (with or without a cart), and when there is plenty of room to simply go around the person standing, the person on the move nevertheless stops in their path and says, "Excuse me" rather than take two steps to their side to go around the person standing.  The person standing is always expected to take the steps to the side so that the person walking can continue in a straight path without having to move left or right.  It plays like something in a broad comedy film, and I'm always too stunned and in awe of the person who can't simply go around me to say anything to them.  And now I've learned that even when I'm on crutches or, as is the case now, walking with a cane, I'm still expected to get out of the way of an oncoming shopper rather than them simply going around me.  It's amazing.  I don't understand it.  And it's only in stores.  Anywhere else people clear a path for me like I'm the plague and open doors for me.  One of life's unsolvable mysteries, I suppose.

2. The Grand Rapids Public Museum is great.

I mean, this museum has pinball machines.  Where else can you say you're going to a museum and then play pinball and design a roller coaster?

3. The Grand Rapids Art Museum is...umm...not.  I was expecting paintings from famous artists and movements throughout the centuries and instead was disappointed to find it's almost exclusively a modern art museum.  At least the decaying fruit on display had a description of what it was supposed to mean.  Most of the items that most needed an explanation had none. Including this one: 

However, they do have motorized scooters available for rental, and that was a definite highlight of the past month.  I even managed not to run into any sculptures, including the crystal-imbedded rug that exists for a reason I have not yet figured out.

4.  Christian Bale is an incredible actor.

This qualifies as a "Broken Foot Observation" because the movie my parents took me to see was Ford vs. Ferrari, which floored me with Bale's acting.  I grew up knowing him as Laurie in Little Women, and then he became Bruce Wayne/Batman, and though I love all those movies, it had never once occurred to me that he was the kind of actor capable of transforming himself so completely that his face and body are merely vessels for another character to inhabit, carrying no physical or vocal mannerisms with him.  The state of movies and entertainment is such right now that I don't think a performance in a film like Ford vs. Ferrari could ever win an Oscar no matter how good it is; the performance is too subtle and the film too blatantly entertaining and socially, culturally, and politically irrelevant in Hollywood's eyes, but in my book, a performance that illuminates a side of humanity and embodies it so completely that I teared up during the film and cried at the end is always relevant, so my vote for the performance of the year goes to Christian Bale as Ken Miles.  There's a speech in the film, delivered by Matt Damon's Carroll Shelby, that mentions the oft-repeated notion that people who find something they love to do never have to work a day in their lives... but the film takes it a step further by identifying the two main characters as people who in contrast have found something they have to do, "something that if they can't do it, it's gonna drive them clean out of their mind."  I have a difficult time sometimes explaining the distinction to people—even other dancers who love to dance—who don't understand what dance is to me and can't conceive of so deeply needing to do something, so to see that represented on film not only in words but so fully and completely in Miles's character filled me up in a way that reminded me why I fell in love with movies and their power and magic in the first place.  So I say if you see one movie from 2019, make it Ford vs. Ferrari.  But bring the Kleenex.

5. People find their inspiration in the small and mundane and selfish as much as in the grand and impressive and purposefully good.

Yesterday after boxing class, first a man who I had noticed watching me several times during class came up to me and told me it was inspiring watching me box in my iWalk, and then a woman came up to me and said, "You're my hero for doing this in that," nodding at my iWalk.  I told her boxing is what's kept me sane since I broke my foot, and we started talking.  We quickly found a common bond—while I'm a dancer who has to dance, she's an avid and very passionate runner who has to run, and twice during the conversation she said, "I've wondered what I would do..." trailing off rather than finishing the sentence with the dreaded but clearly indicated words "if I couldn't run," and she repeated that I was her hero for boxing in the iWalk.  It was a statement that bounced around in my head all day, especially because, still in a Christian Bale mood, that evening I watched The Dark Knight Rises with my husband, where Batman's final line, delivered to Jim Gordan, is "A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended."  As small as that action might have been to Gordan and might be in contrast with Batman's overt acts of heroism, it nevertheless was still an action intended to do good.  It was a selfless act for someone else.  Me boxing on my iWalk rather than staying home is 100% selfish.  I do it for the sole reason that it makes me feel better.  I'm not being brave.  I'm not thinking of anyone else's needs or wants.  I'm not doing anything other than literally putting one foot in front of the other in what is, compared to so many others like my uncle who lost his legs and has lived with the life-changing pain of it for decades, a minor blip in my life.  And yet at least half a dozen strangers have gone out of their way in the last several weeks to tell me it inspires them to watch me do it.  Maybe sometimes we don't need a Batman, or even a Jim Gordan, to feel better.  Sometimes we need to see someone else, in a situation we fear happening to us, just being ordinary—someone simply choosing to continue doing things for themselves, choosing to stay active, choosing to feel good, choosing to be completely and totally normal, even in a selfish way, so that we know we too are capable of handling what they're handling if we ever wind up in their shoes.  Maybe in an ordinary time, we draw inspiration from those we can see ourselves in the most, especially if they're facing something we fear and handling it in a way that is reassuringly and comfortingly boring.

6. Parents are the best.  And moms know from a phone call exactly when they need to come be mom.

If you can't fly... box

Monday I went to boxing class.  No big deal... except it was a very big deal for me, because it was the first time I'd been out of my apartment in one week and four days. Also, because I broke my foot and can't bear any weight on it, I had to do it wearing this thing:

But wearing the iWalk wasn't really the big deal part.  Getting outside and rejoining the life that exists outside my apartment and getting an exercise high were the big deal parts

Since I broke my foot, I'd left the apartment twice: once for the urgent care doctor the day after it happened, and a second time to see an orthopedic foot surgeon.  Despite the "you can't dance for six months" prognosis, I had planned to return to teaching ballet the same week. Turns out, Winter had other plans, and because of two winter storms and an apartment that is only accessible via multiple stairs and a sidewalk on apartment property that isn't kept clear, including a stretch that is perpetually under either water or ice, getting out has become completely impossible with crutches. I had to cancel my classes and have been unable to leave. I look out every day and see snow on a lawn and snow on the roof of the grey building opposite me.  Which was fine for a bit because the specialist's prognosis that I'd make a full recovery eventually makes everything better.  But still....Grey.  Indoors.  No sun, even through the clouds.  No people.  No bustle.

I've filled my days largely with three things: Reading American Ulysses, which would have been an excellent Christmas gift under any circumstances but especially with a broken foot because it's over 700 pages long; writing and trying to find literary agents to query (the former of which I find particularly difficult without outside stimulation and experience); and following Youtube broken foot exercise videos.  I've become a devotee of "chair fitness" videos, especially those on a channel made by one very upbeat woman who's clearly had 15 cups of coffee before every video and who acts like we're all in the room with her—a bit annoying perhaps under normal circumstances but a blessing when she's the closest I come to being part of the outside world.  Her videos have also been the highlight of my day because I can do everything in them without help. The number of times a day I ask my husband for help is driving me crazy, even if it's not driving him crazy (his patience is incredible).  But for 45 minutes a day with her videos, I'm completely independent and normal and guaranteed not to need anything I can't do for myself.  Still, though... I needed to get out.  And I needed to work up a sweat.

And so yesterday I determined to go to boxing class.  By now a master of crutches from using them indoors, and with a not-so-great-but-could-be-worse attempt to salt the sidewalks by property staff, I put on makeup and felt pretty for the first time in a week and a half, went out into the cold, and with my husband spotting me to make sure I didn't fall and break more bones, over the course of ten minutes, several pauses to rest, and many dogs barking at me from their windows, I made my way to our car. Freedom!  My husband loaded up my iWalk and boxing bag and we were off.

As I put my things in my locker at the gym, one man, pulling on his overcoat after taking the prior class, looked at me with my knee crutch and said, "That's dedication."

"Well, I can't sit on the couch.  That would drive me crazy.  It's not an option," I said. "I have to do this."

"And you'll get out of that thing faster because you are," he said before walking away.

Several more people used that same word—"dedication"—after seeing me, both Monday and when I went again last night.  And that got me thinking—Dedication to what, exactly?  It's not about boxing.  To me, it's dedication to life.  It's dedication to not giving up 4-8 weeks of my life just because my fifth metatarsal shaft is in two unattached parts.  It's dedication to not succumbing to self pity.  It's dedication to putting myself in the best possible position to return to normal once my bone heals.  It's dedication to keep moving, however I can do that.  And that's how life should be lived.