Grace

This weekend my brother surprised me by showing up in our state to have Thanksgiving dinner with his girlfriends family. After some aggravating non-planning we decided to meet up for some random activity before they jumped in a car and returned to the "north".

The random activity? Ice-skating.

Having spent most of my life in Hawaii I have not had a lot of occasion to skate on ice. This is mostly because in Hawaii all the ice is found in your pina colada (or mai-tai, or shave-ice, or the cooler...you get the idea). My brother roller-blades as his main form of transportation, so ice skating proves no problem for him, for me this would be the second time in my life I'd ever seen an ice rink in person.

My name is Katy it is not Grace. I am admittedly one of the biggest klutzes around. I've been known to walk into walls for no reason, fall up stairs, whack my hands (arms, legs, head) on random objects almost completely out of my path and most recently I somehow managed to get a paper cut on my nose just by getting out of the car. I walk around most of the time with a lot of bruises and cuts without knowing where they came from. My husband thinks I complain a lot about my bumps and scraps, but he only hears about maybe 2% of the things I do. I only complain about the ones that really hurt.

Surprisingly, though I have problems with the whole walking-like-a-normal-person, I am extremely good at the harder parts of coordination. I can rub my tummy and pat my head at the same time. I am an accomplished chop-stick user, and can though I can't pick a fly out of the air I can pick up rice one grain at a time if I so choose. I can ski fairly well, albeit slowly. I am an excellent dancer and come off quite gracefully when I dance. In fact during jazz and ballet classes that is the main comment I hear. I move "pretty". It is the same with ice skating.

I did one turn around the rink next to the wall both pulling myself forward and holding myself up. Three fourths of the way around I had figured out how to slide my feet out and in enough to propel myself along without the wall and to coast for most of the way. Another half an hour had me zig-zagging my path and by forty-five minutes I was brave enough to pick up my feet just a little. This proved some problem, as did a graceful stop without having to turn a full 360 degrees, but I figure for a very short session on the ice I had mastered the basics and simply needed refinement.

Refinement may be hard to come by though as my partner in crime did one turn around the rink then promptly plopped himself down on the bench and waited while I puffed around trying to keep up with my brother and his girlfriend. Luckily being a klutz I've learned the all-important lesson of laughing at myself, and with others, when I mess up. This also allows me to be perfectly happy going my own speed and learning at my own pace. Don't worry folks, I'll get there when I get there.

It is odd though that I can master rather complicated movements so easily and have no trouble keeping my balance or my focus when executing them. I have a theory that this may come from dance class itself. I spent so many of my childhood years hearing "Don't look at your feet, they are there whether you look at them or not." that it simply ingrained itself in my head. My appendages will be there, whether I see them or not, they are in fact attached to me. Though I may not see feet moving forward, they are, and I will be moved from point A to point B. In dance performance this is desirable. You want to be looking up, smiling, be inviting and happy. People like watching faces, not bodies...they look for eyes instinctively, therefore your eyes should be available to the audience. You don't need to be worried about what your feet are doing, you tell them to do a shuffle-heel-toe and they will. More importantly it isn't required to look where your heel is toeing because if everything is working properly the person next to you is also heel-toeing and there will be no one in the way. You move left, they move left simultaneously.

Of course in the real world people do not move exactly the way you do. More over, objects do not move with you. In fact objects don't move at all. They just sit there, being solid and stationary. It's infuriating, I am moving forward, other people are moving toward me, it would stand to reason that I should be looking up, out at the world, and not have to worry about the desk sitting in the way. I'm me. I'm going places. The desk should move out of my way and go places too.

Unfortunately, it never does.

So when ice skating, or swing dancing, or following the ebb and flow of New York City streets I am exceptionally good. My body does what I tell it too, and I'm off. But when I'm thrown that curve ball, that instance where my environment dictates my movement rather than my movement dictating my environment - I'm sunk. And often black and blue.

But at least it's a pretty shade of blue...

(As an unrelated side note, the person who found my page by searching for "Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife" - get it! That book is awesome!)