Dancing with my Daughter

My daughter just had her birthday. I remember when we used to dance around the living room together. She was a natural and was a ballerina for a long time. She still takes dancing lessons from time to time.

Now, I still feel that I sometimes am dancing with her "in the spirit" because she teaches me so many things.

For example, she points out that some kinds of dance are beautiful yet perhaps too rigid and formal for her Dad (my husband) and I to learn together. So she suggests another type which may be more free-flowing for us.

The same with what I learn from her about cooking. She knows when to use "rules" and when to break them. When one after another, my cakes flop, she says, Mom, it's because you don't follow the recipe. That works, she says, when you cook most everything else. But not with cakes. So, finally, yesterday I make my first cake by the recipe and it turns out well!

In other words, she's teaching me when I need "rules" and when nurture or nature will do.

She seems to know how to decide which way works best when she makes batiks as well. These days she's having fun learning the tjanting tool and the precision required. She also is learning how to frame. Yet often, she batiks free-form and the result of both the structure and freedom she applies result in glorious colors and designs - each one unique and each one make you pause for a long time.

As far as nature goes, she once had the only porch in town with tomatoes, sunflowers and many other flowers and veggies growing randomly and freely on her porch and front lawn! And yet when you looked closer you see that there was special training, potting going on with upside down planting and just the right amount of water the right time of day.

Same thing with languages - she learns them easily. She couldn't if she didn't know when to apply the disciplines and to continue to practice and when to enjoy reading her favorite authors in French. She works at a French restaurant where customers think she's French!

Someday maybe I'll finally learn from her how to coordinate rules and freeplay...

I'm so happy to have a daughter who still is teaching her mother how to dance!

Happy Birthday Week, Little One.

With more love than I can possibly ever contain,

Your Glad Mom