It took me twenty minutes to stop crying.
Twenty minutes! That's a high school lunch break. That's a
'between meetings comfort and email break'. A drive to the forest. That's how long it
takes to finally fall asleep after a day so hard the only way you find
dreamland is to think of 'white, empty space' and hope for the best.
Twenty minutes. But it's little wonder it didn't last
longer, because this was a moment I'd waited to see for the entirety of my
life.
One stage.
One dance performance.
One son.
One lifetime of hoping I'd live this moment.
We have been so blessed to have found the place we live in
now, and oh how we found it! Nearly pushed away by a real estate deal gone
sour, we somehow stumbled upon our current home 3-1/2 years ago, only five
houses east of that lost property. This house has brought us to and kept us in
this place, amongst these people, with this dance school, with that amazing
human being who has been so welcoming and wonderful to our beautiful boy who
wants little more than to share the joy that radiates from within him with
everyone in reach. Shaking bum. Grooving to his own beat.
My son. On a stage. Dancing.
Years ago I prayed that he would dance. They had me so
worried he'd even walk. His walking still stilted with poor balance but today the angel that's going to change all that. Because...well, I'm crying again as I write this.
Because those deep fears remain ghosts. Those worries, vapor. That was my son up
there. MY son. On a stage.
Dancing.
Yes, I later had to carry him to the car he was so knackered, but STILL...
Those who have known me for decades will be reading this
with an altogether different totality of heart and may quite likely be stood up
and cheering. My life was dance. My only motivator was dance. My soul...for
dance. I wish you were all there. I wish you could have seen that live.
My God.
It all feels too hard to explain, too vast to bundle up into
type on a screen. But if you know me you know I was incinerated this afternoon.
I stopped filming and fled to the lobby. Absolutely unable to stop the floods
of tears. I saw a man standing there and tried to explain what I was feeling,
how grateful I was. He happened to be the father of Rukai's dance teacher. It
was as beautiful a finish to that beautiful moment as I could have imagined. I
thanked him for creating her. And I meant it.
I'd started filming the stage some 60 seconds before Rukai
was due on it. I didn't want to miss the curtain stroking past that beautiful
face. Not a second to be lost. Not for this. No way.
I said to the air 'come on dude, you can do it'. Not because
I didn't think he could, but because I could not believe this moment had
finally come. That I was about to see this. And the curtain pulled back and
there was my son. On that stage. And it was all I could do to hold the camera
still. And exactly as I did the day before while watching him perform in the school nativity, I
wept silently, while an epic grin reached the lobes of my ears and quite
probably pierced them with joy. A joy that wrapped around my very soul and
lifted me straight to heaven to high five the lost family. Those who were
seated right beside me while that camera captured it all. They clapped and
whistled for all they were worth. We celebrated that magnificent performance.
The one we were threatened with never being able to see,
those many years ago.
Oh, we saw it, mate.
We saw it.
And that pride of my pride knows my pride because I told him
all about it. After he saw me grinning and waving at him in the finale. And he
waved back. And in that room full of our new 'dance family', there was, for
that moment, no one but us. Me on the floor filming, him on the stage
waving.
Oh this moment!! How it shines!!!
I'd no doubt he'd blow me away this afternoon but I am still
entirely in shreds. And just like I'd rebuilt the cheese all those years ago, I
have glued the heart back together again. My pride---
God, there are no WORDS for it!!!!! I have lost all
eloquence, the prose gone to gurning. I am equally full of and empty of
emotion. Never been so spent in all my days.
This has been a glorious year of personal disaster and equal
personal triumph. My plans for the next are larger than anything I've ever
pursued, mostly because I need those challenges to build myself into a better
me. I am nothing to Rukai unless I am the best me going. He deserves nothing
less.
But man alive, that boy--my boy--
Well, if he is supposed to be suffering...
If we are supposed to be 'barely coping'...
If our life is meant to be difficult, and challenging and
painful...
Burn the dictionaries.
Go back to preschool.
Teach me all of existence once again.
You are wrong.
My words are the very best I've got to offer, and today
these words are clumsy. Disjointed. My mind is in a whirlwind.
Today, my son was dancing on a stage.
If I should die tomorrow, that alone has made this a life worth living.
