Unfrozen (or How Parties are Neosporin)
The day before the show I rolled toward my husband under our fluffy duvet and said, “Ya know, I think some people release a book, and then wake up in the morning to think, ‘hey, that’s cool.’ And some people might go out for donuts or even steaks. And big deals have a party that the publisher throws. But then there’s me.” My sister-in-law called it a wedding reception, and I fully embraced the notion. I also directed and produced a 12 act variety show (4 acts belonging to yours truly). Spoiler Alert: my book is about figuring out how to be an artist after the loss of my medium, ballet, in a stage accident. Double Spoiler Alert: I figured it out.
The party/show night was truly one of the best nights of my life. The joy of providing an incredible party with yummy food and drinks always makes me feel my best. But the show? Oh, that put it way over the edge. It was homey, small, but it also drummed up the very best kind of audience+performers energy and hormones. Oxytocin provides that we-are-safe-and-love-each-other feeling that we all long for, and our venue was full of it (along with escaped star-shaped mylar balloons in gold, silver, and blue). I challenged myself to sing a song, do a dance, tell a story, and tell some jokes, and I succeeded. My real triumph of the night, though, was arranging acts in such a way that we carried the loving audience with us. I had storytellers, joke-tellers, song-singers, and dance-doers aside from myself, and every one of them landed in the warm, feathered nest of audience support.
Even when I was still dancing and loving every minute on stage, I really, REALLY wanted to hold the mic. A microphone feels like a magic wand in my hand. I will literally never drop the mic because heck if I’m gonna let somebody else come pick it up.
All that to say: I enjoyed myself.
I took my kids to see Frozen 2, and I cried like a woman with deep, ancient feelings running through her veins. I let big, round, salty tears soak into my sweatshirt along with the popcorn grease I wiped on it.
Elsa Braid!
No spoilers and no shock: Anna and Elsa need to reevaluate their loyalties and their needs to explore their own motivations. Elsa goes off to figure herself out, and it leads to one of the best songs of the movie, “Show Yourself.” I was slayed. Because I just showed myself, my most favorite self. She was released from the dungeon made of lies, and she’s walking around in a dress made of ice that is somehow seamlessly stuck right on to her body. I don’t have an ice dress, but I have talents. When we engage our talents, we can wear them like clothes, seamless wisps of the extensions of ourselves that others can see. Of course, clothes do not make the woman anymore than we should be defined by our accomplishments or gifts. I believe we are defined by Love. And one thing Love gives us is the freedom to use what we have been given and wear the clothes made specially for us. We’re permitted and empowered to show ourselves.
Ok, this paragraph may be the tiniest bit revelatory but not too much. As Elsa’s song and discovery reach their big climax, she sings: “You are the one you’ve been waiting for.” I let it go (ahem, sorry) with that line and absolutely soaked the cuffs of my sweatshirt. I hate to be so du jour, but if I had to give Elsa an enneagram type, I’d give her a 4. She’s a tortured romantic like me. We 4’s can’t help it; we see all the colors, feel all the feels, are constantly reaching for depth and new discovery, and often that all reads as self-important. So, I’m sure all those tendencies contributed to my over-identification with Elsa in that theater. Also, it’s all real and really important.
Throughout the writing, celebration planning, partying, and promoting, I’ve regularly been terrified and sometimes paralyzed by the fear of self-centrism and the corollary judgment, misperception, and irrelevance of my work. And, clearly, memoir is naturally self-centric; I am telling MY story from inside MY head in MY words (and largely for MY benefit), so the risk is significant! At first, it was unintentional, but then I saw the hidden rubric at work in my brain and employed it whenever I lost the forest for picking tiny bits of bark off every old tree. What did she need someone to know? What about this feeling/experience/explanation did she always long to communicate but could not because of immaturity, terror, or repressive pressure or neglect? The answers (or the intent to answer) infused the work with a resonant compassion and advocacy. I was able to write tender things down and reveal my embarrassments and failures more freely because it was for her. Over and over again I’ve now been told that the book helped people to understand their own pains and dreams, so I know writing with another in mind has paid off.
And, yes, I know “her” is me. I was the one I’d been waiting for. Only the adult version of myself could go back and grab that scared girl, that perplexed, pained young woman and say, “It’s ok. You aren’t alone. I know all about what happened and how you feel, and we are going to be ok.” But, I didn’t do that alone. I was taught, strengthened, loved, and changed by so many important figures in my life (most of whom you can meet in the Acknowledgements!). I believe that the Spirit of God in me did the work of absorbing, applying, and accepting the good, hard lessons.
In the same way that I helped Little Jessica, she helped me, Adult Jessica. Reunification with that former part of me brought back courage, energy, and joy that had been beaten into the corners by fear and pain. That girl had a lot going for her, and I’m so glad to have those skills back in my tool belt.
My chief prayers for myself throughout my life have been “Let me a part of what You do” and “give and take whatever You need to for me to be whole.” The idiosyncrasies and pathologies exerting push and pull on my actions, beliefs, and decisions have always dragged me toward trusting pain, critique, insults, and even abuse more than I trust support, grace, and encouragement. Many times, I’ve been humbled by the flash floods of change, insight and renewal packaged inside beneficence.
The party was one such moment. If the writing and sharing of The Almost Dancer were the stitches that joined long separated selves back together, that party was the ointment that healed the tender seam. I absorbed so much healing, emollient love--emotional Neosporin with steroids! Stitches dissolve; scars slowly fade; nerves heal; experience becomes story. The Almost Dancer can go on a shelf. It did its job in my life. I don’t intend to say, though, that I’ll never need to revisit it. I don’t think books written by our lives can ever really be closed until we get to Forever, but the stories in this book no longer feel like angry birds in a cage.
“You are the one you’ve waited for” feels dangerous to share because I don’t think we ourselves are the ultimate answer to anything, let alone our own problems and lives. But, the line does make some deep sense to me after making it through these last few years. I don’t see it as that menacing self-centrism I so fear. Rather, it flashes a glimpse at what wholeness looks like, a wholeness that’s held in the palm of God’s hand.
If eternity is somehow circular, encompassing every beginning and every end, if God is the Alpha and the Omega, then moments like that party give me a glimpse of it. It was the end, the capstone, the cherry on my ballet story (at least for now), and it was the start, the groundwork for a future of a new way of being on stage and available to others. There was a holiness to it. Maybe it’s silly to say that about a party where I did stand-up and wore an adult-sized replica of my jazz dance costume from 1990, but it's true. And the other people there made it all so great! They smiled so wide, and enjoyed themselves so thoroughly. We loved each other, and were loved back. It was a moment of plural “you.” Community, clarity, courage, costumes... BEST. NIGHT. EVER. (so far…)
