The Time Between Seconds

Bodies in Motion

The dead leaves sound like clapping crowds as the wind blows them across the surface of the ground.

I've been here before. At this place, at this time, in this park, sitting on this bench and wearing the clothes I am today.

"Bodies in motion," My choreographer once said. "Moons spin around their axes, while revolving around planets, which spin around their axes, and then in turn spin around stars. One chaotic system among thousands of chaotic systems. That is the sum of our existence. We are simply particles revolving around the things in our lives, the places we go and the people we love."

I look up, as tears role down my cheeks, at the slender figure carved into stone, on a pedestal in front of me. This is the place that's been the centre of my orbit. My everything.

Hundreds of times, I've been here. I've been here season after season, lifetime after lifetime... well, what feels like lifetimes. I've watched the sun rise, shining like a spotlight and brightening her regal face as she proudly poses – the same way I used to when the curtain lifted. Prima, a title and the centre of all the other dancer's orbit – the star, the one the chaos is choreographed around, the crowd's soul focus.

I've watched the sun set as well, but only once. For I could not bear to watch her drenched in darkness without applause more than a single time. The curtain set on my performance too, for each Prima's reign must also come to an end. I steped off the stage to make way for the next youth to step into my point shoes.

"Tell me," My choreographer's guidance comes back to me once again. "Is what we do here coincidental? Do you simply walk out on stage, flounder about for a bit and by some spectacular miracle everything always works out perfectly? Do stars and galaxies, with their immense gravitational pulls, simply happen not to pull each other out of orbit or is their dance choreographed the way ours are? I believe in a divine Choreographer and that nothing is coincidental and in the end that is what we try to recreate on stage, is it not? We try to imitate that spectacularly organized pattern of movement that we see everywhere in this chaos we call life."

I've never been here before, never at this specific point in time.

I've never understood what my Choreographer was trying to say and I've never understood why people say that things are always according to a plan, that there would be some logic behind the madness of everything happening in daily life. I never thought that letting the curtain set on my reign would be the best performance I could have ever given.

I understand all these things now.

My aptly named Swan Song was my portrayal of the iconic Swan Lake, I danced as the Black- and White swans. Most people find it hard to step into the proverbial evil point shoes of the Black swan, but I had the opposite problem, embodying a manipulative, flirtatious woman came naturally to me. To me she wasn't just a character, she was me.

Week after week my choreographer would work with me and soon noticed my inclination to the darkness. I always took her words to heart and vowed to be her brightest star, so it hit home when she told me that she didn't think I was cut out for this role. For my lack of projection, as the White Swan, she said.

Determined to prove her wrong I did research, delving into my Christian background, about what it meant to be good. To be clothed in light instead of moving in the shadows and not long after that my world fell apart.

My eyes opened and I saw pride, vanity and greed as I looked into the cold surface of the mirror. I knew I needed to stop, for the praise from fellow dancers and audiences was too much for me to resist. So I did and, boy, did people protest. For I was still young and had no reason to retire. All while I was mocked for my Christianity and my new found morals by my closest friends, my choreographer would simply smile her approval.

"And that is why I came back here, Lord." I say, wipe the tears of joy from my wrinkled face with my leathery hands and continue my prayer. "To thank you for taking away the life I thought I wanted and giving me the one you had planned all along."

I think back over everything that happened since I took a stand and walked away from everything I had worked so hard for. I became a choreographer, realized that I hated the industry I once worked in, and opened my own little ballet studio to teach children soon after. I fell in love and, now, it's been three years since my husband's death – the time we spent together was no fairy-tale, but it was such a beautiful dance. I never would have met him if it were not for the path the Lord put me on.

"I've been here before, Lord, but never quite here. I've never been the grandmother of three before." I say with a laugh. So I came here to thank God, as I've done with every grandchild and every child I was graciously given. "Oh, Lord, I've never been here before, but I know that it's all in your plan."

We don't need to be a planet or a dancer to be bodies in motion, to have a set path or plan. We don't need to see the future to know that there is one. These were both things I didn't realize until I looked back upon my life, but these were all things I knew you should know my dearest grandchild number 3 and that is why I write to you, so you may never forget.