Too Old, Too Young to Change
October 2012
My eldest daughter is nearly 13 years old. I have just turned 43. Both of us are on the cusp of changes we view with dubious, suspicious unwillingness.
My daughter feels caught between changes she doesn’t fully understand. She is both pleased and embarrassed when I call her our woman-child. Her beauty is fragile: shaded by emotions that drift across the landscape of her soul like clouds. Sometimes the wind blows wispy thoughts by quickly and lightly. Sometimes my child is dark with unshed tears banked up grey upon grey until the lightning strikes.
I feel old and young: caught between changes in mind and body that I still don’t fully understand. I’m pleased and embarrassed when the same person who asks me for advice also tells me to move into the 21st century. Caught between people’s perceptions of what my lived years can offer, I find I laugh out loud a lot more; except for the times when I am dark with unshed tears banked up grey upon grey.
Then lightning strikes. In moments of illumination we see, briefly. We move with the wind and find ourselves dancing in the kitchen and crying in the rain. We say yes to the offerings that change brings.
We are invited to dance together. On a crazy whim we say yes; my daughter and I say yes, together.
Some might say I am too old be performing in public anymore. My daughter is too inexperienced. Yet we say yes to the offer to be part of ‘O-Sea,’ a new mid-length contemporary dance work in development by Katie Chown for premier in Australia next year.
My eldest daughter will be 13 years old then and I will be nearly 44. Both of us will be performing in Katie’s new work, doubtlessly dubious but willing to dance the ongoing story of change, together.