This past Thursday I had a very long day. I taught two extra dance classes than I normally do, so that meant my day began at 5:30am and I didn’t finish up at the dance studio until 9:15. The long day, coupled with the long week and my failure to fully acclimate to my full time job left me feeling punch drunk by the time I locked up the dance studio and shuffled to my car. Despite my fatigue, I had some beautiful takeaways from the day.

I know I referenced my dance students before in this blog, especially the little beginners, but my time with them is so brief and concentrated that I feel like I’m a sponge for the perfect lessons they have to teach me. On Thursday I taught a “group 1 class,” and because many of the girls had recently moved up to that level, they are basically glorified beginners. I met three little girls – all cousins, each six years old. The tiniest one’s name was Libby and she has a personality like bottled sunshine. Every time I asked her a question, she would look at me, her blue eyes sparkling, and a grin would break across her face, revealing her perfect dimples, and she would answer me in a fluty singsong voice, a giggle threatening to break through at any moment. She the kind of kid who presents a unique challenge to a teacher. She’s magnetic – a beacon of light, and consequently it would be so easy to pay her extra attention. Not only is that not fair to the other students, it’s not fair to Libby. The longer it takes her to realize that she’s cuter than a pile of puppies, the better. With any luck, she’ll learn she’s smart and strong and capable and kind long before she figures out she’s beautiful – and that would be a gift.

In “Group 1,” Irish dance students begin to learn “hardshoe” dances. They are performed in heavy shoes, similar to tap shoes, but made with fiberglass tips and heels. The shoes are inordinately expensive, and it can be quite a task to ask parents of a six-year-old to spend upwards of $100 on a pair of shoes for an activity their kid might give up in six months. For this reason, we keep a box of used shoes in our back room that parents can purchase at a steep discount, providing there is a pair that fit their child’s feet. Somehow, Libby knew this, and she immediately asked me if she could look in the box of used shoes because “my mommy said I could get used hard shoes.” She asked every five minutes in a voice so earnestly insistent I gave in.

While the girls who owned them were changing into their hardshoes, we dragged the box out of the back room, and began looking for a pair to fit Libby. I knew it would be an impossible task given the size of her tiny feet, but I had to let her look, and I had to let her try. She found a pair easily four sizes too big and she put them on. “I think these are good!” she said. “No Libby, sweetheart, they’re too big, but you can try them on the stage to see how they sound.” She stomped around and came back to me. “These fit! See?” She looked like a little girl in her mom’s high heels. Her cousin tried the same pair on, and of course, they fit her like a dream. Libby was crestfallen. “Oh honey, don’t worry, we’ll find you another pair.” But Libby’s as smart as she is cute, and she knew there wasn’t a pair in the box that would fit her. She sat down on the chair next to me, and her chin started to quiver, her cherubic face crumpling as tears welled in her eyes. Her little chest heaved, and I had to lean in to hear her. “It’s not fair” she choked, “there’s not another pair.” I told her that we get new used shoes from dancers all the time, and her pair would show up in the box. “But I want them now.” I told her I knew she did, but she would have to be patient. She would get them. “I don’t even want to do hardshoes now, “ she said. I looked into her little face and told her if she didn’t learn the steps, when she finally got her shoes, she wouldn’t know how to dance in them. That clicked. Libby got up on the floor, and tipped and trebled away in her stocking feet her dimples peeking through on her tear-stained cheeks.

Any time in life that we want something, we are like Libby, and we are particularly like her in our dating lives. We want a relationship, a partner, a husband. We try on things that don’t fit and try to make them work. We have people who are our teachers who whisper in our ears that we have to be patient; that we have to wait. We’ll get ours. We watch our friends try on things that would never work for us, and they fit. It looks so easy for them, like it was so easy for Libby’s cousin to find her pair of shoes in the bin. When our relationships don’t fit, we crumple and cry and we say it isn’t fair. We want to give up; we don’t even want to try. But the truth is, just like Libby had to start learning in her stocking feet, we have to live our lives joyfully. We have to get up off the chair and live like we already have everything we could ever need so that when our partner show’s up, we’ll already know how to dance.

Until next time…