The twirling of children, of a leaf moving in time with the wind, of businesspeople on the city streets to the beat of their Blackberries – graceful. Do they have beauty? Children trip and scrape young knees, a leaf is tossed about at the mercy of the elements – but it is part of the choreography of time. The Earth spins, tilted on its axis, acting as a metronome that sets the rhythm for the routine performance of its inhabitants. Ever-shifting formations of birds in flight undulate in the air, and rivers curve, braid, flow, part of the water cycle, lessons in dancing.
We were all dancing girls, all four of us. Only Shannon and Shelby took ballet, but they would come home from dance class and teach Sam and me their newly acquired skills. With the kitchen radio tuned to the country station we would twirl like we thought ballerinas should. The older girls would move with relative poise, but my crooked young feet got tangled with each other and I often fell over attempting the fancy spins they executed with refinement.
Neither of my parents dances much, especially my dad. The dance floor that is the tile of my kitchen, though, is a place where they are free of their self-consciousness and can dance together beautifully. A man holding his wife is beautiful.

The lives of my parents are intertwined, twirling together, each knowing the practiced steps to the rhythm in which they live. Their lives, the everyday actions my parents do may seem meaningless when isolated, but their actions are not trivial. My dad washing the dishes – a menial task, but in doing so he serves my mother. They both work, eat, sleep – living a life that seems ordinary, but so in tune with each other and their common goal, in time with each other, moving gracefully in contentment with each other to show us, their daughters, the beauty of their choreographed dance.

My dad works for National Grid. It is the electric company that supplies power to the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts. His hours are long – I remember one week where I saw him only twice because of a hurricane that caused widespread black outs. I used to dread thunderstorms, not because I feared the thunder and lightning, but because the storms brought wind, wind which made tree branches fall on power lines, which caused power outages, which brought my dad into work. I used to wonder why he was so busy all the time, working so much, and so tired on his time off. I understand now, though, that he doesn’t work so hard to supply power but to support his wife and his four daughters, taking care of the ones he loves. The storms are his background music, the thunder a strong percussion section and the wind singing the melody for the grace with which my dad provides for our family.

My mother does not let her life become routine – instead, she lives purposefully. The elderly man, a very sick man, in room 32 looks forward to nighttime, because the nurse who works the graveyard shift at the

at the hospital, my mom, will be not only his nurse, but also his caretaker. The way she pulls up his blankets and rubs his back after she replaces his IV bag are parts of the choreography of both their lives. His sickness is out of his own control, out of my mother’s control, but what was meant for evil, God meant for good. Their lives are an attempt at elegance and an acceptance of grace. There is a freedom in dancing that exhilarates the soul more than anything else I’ve found.
It’s not as though it doesn’t take work. My mom is a great nurse, but there are nights where Lawrence General is understaffed and every bed on her floor is full. The wind and rain complicate my dad’s job. The fallen world and human depravity place limits on the beauty in the earth, and human ability is not enough to create grace in our lives.
Not too long ago, as I was climbing the stairs in my house to head to bed for the night, I glanced into the living room and saw my dad sleeping on the couch. From that moment I realized the rhythm was thrown and my parents’ marriage was not the intertwined dance I thought it was. I thought their marriage might fail. My sisters were all living in different states – my family was not my family, we were something uncharted and unfamiliar, moving awkwardly through the days and sleeplessly through the nights, the choreography off. Like when I was a little girl and fell while attempting my sisters’ more sophisticated dance steps, my family had fallen. My dad still went to work every day for National Grid, my mom still cared for her patients at night, and though the actions of their days were the same, the elegance with which they moved together was gone. Looking back, I understand that Earth still spun, rotating around the sun steadily, that clocks ticked, the steady beat of the world continued, but it didn’t feel that way. Not until the years of practice of the grace of moving together aided in healing my parents’ relationship, the practice of our family moving in time with each others’ lives helped restore the grace with which we had once functioned. Each act is thoughtful and considered – selfless. We spend time together, intentional time to really know each other. It isn’t the same anymore – the dance is now intricate, new moves were learned – a new routine formed because we aren’t the same as we were before. But, still, a man holding his wife is beautiful. The dance, the constant rhythm that is God’s sovereignty, brought a restoration of the aligned steps of my family.
This is why ballerinas practice pliés and twirls and pointe, bruising their feet and tiring their muscles. The dance of control and elegance, practiced grace. The principles used in a foolish game of hopscotch are the same principles that are used for the beauty of ballet; the hopscotcher starts with a grand jete, next does a pas de bourree, pirouettes, and repeats the hops back to square number one. No act is meaningless, beauty-less, even the most trivial of things. The movement of the Earth and her creatures is not random motion but a God-ordained, choreographed, dance.

End