Safety Dance

I learned today that some of the stuff we’ve been stockpiling to keep our kids “entertained” (read: to get them tired enough to sleep for part of the night) might actually be useful for adults, too.

Like so many parents right now, I’m with my son for the majority of the hours of the day...and the night at this point. Hello, COVID-19 sleep disruption! In order to make the long days of mostly just the two of us more manageable, I have stockpiled numerous learning materials, books, toys, apps, and outdoor toys. I was fortunate enough to acquire a trampoline about an hour before the world turned off in March. I thought it would be a great thing to help my son with his sensory issues and hyperactivity for the few weeks we might be home until this whole virus thing got sorted out. Feel free to laugh at me for just the first time in this post now.

Cut to four months and two days later, my son rarely uses the trampoline except as a place to lounge and spill juice boxes. Tonight I realized that this toy was only ever meant for me.

When I was a young girl, I would spend hours in my room making up dances. Accompanied by 80s pop, classic rock, and Motown music on my cassette deck, I would make use of every corner of my Laura Ashley-wallpapered, pink-carpeted “studio.” I spun around, I shimmied, I jumped, I crawled on the floor like a cat, I pretended I was leaning back against a chainlink fence, and pretty much fantasized that I was Madonna, Janet Jackson, Prince, Laura Brannigan, Donna Summer, and Duran Duran. When I was feeling truly inspired I was all of them at once!

An early ballet school dropout, I feel pretty confident that those dances were probably terrible. I have no idea since I didn’t have a full-length mirror and the point wasn’t to watch myself. If anything, the point was to escape my awkward self and my suburban, middle school reality. I was sweaty and transported and in the flow.

This evening, around 30 years later, I was finally able to recapture that feeling. On my way home from that walk we all take now, “Rock and Roll” by Velvet Underground sprang through my headphones and I was obligated to dance up my driveway. Then I spotted the trampoline in the yard and I was obligated to kick off my sneakers, climb in, and jump and dance like crazy. I kept going for close to an hour, reaching sublime physical and emotional heights. I sang “I Can See Clearly Now” at the top of my lungs (obviously the Jimmy Cliff version). I jumped to songs former students of mine recommended ("Lost in the Light" by Bahamas). I got in my feelings about Sia’s “Elastic Heart.” I made up a jump/dance to Lower Dens’ “Ondine” (download it, you won’t regret it). My sweaty shirt flew up and my quarantine pooch bounced over my elastic pants (yep still wearing those) during Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" and the Rolling Stones' "Heartbreaker." I used every inch of that trampoline like it was my old room with the thick pink carpet I begged my mom to get me. I was red and sweaty and far from graceful. It didn’t matter because no one could see me.

I have felt invisible lately. Most of my time is spent trying to keep my son regulated and happy and healthy. I’m a food deliverer, playmate, iPad-provider, swim instructor, online-orderer, game-inventor, toy-fixer, amateur occupational therapist and physical therapist, failed potty-trainer and occasional punching bag when he loses control. Like everyone else, I’m also an amateur plumber and carpenter (thank you, YouTube and my late father’s giant toolbox). Sometimes I feel less than invisible - only visible for doing or providing things. I danced and jumped like no one was watching, because these days it feels like they aren’t. And that isn’t always a bad thing.

I try not to give unsolicited advice, but I will just say that if you have a trampoline, get yourself to it and do your own safety dance, so you, too, can dance when everything is out of control (courtesy of Men Without Hats).