Going Barefoot

I was sure I wanted to be a ballet dancer. It began with a costume. The tutu, the pink tights, the ballet shoes. Mom enrolled me in David Lachine’s ballet class. He was Russian. His wife Tanya too. There was a staff involved. A stick. Never to touch us, but for him to pound the floor as she pounded the piano.

 

 One recital was all I managed. I was so excited to wear the costume on stage at Marymount High School. In the huge auditorium. Soon thereafter it was time to reframe my desire to dance. Mom was no longer interested in a stern, somber voice which didn’t hesitate to hint that none of us were bound for the Kirov. She wanted something freer.

 

So Mom found Gertrude Knight. Something called creative movement. That was for after school. And during the school day there was rhythms in the spacious room with cool, shiny linoleum floors. I don’t remember who taught rhythms at the University Elementary School ( UES), the laboratory school next door to UCLA where my parents enrolled us to have a more liberal, innovative education. Nothing like that which I was sure existed at Marymount, just across  Sunset Boulevard.

 

In rhythms I found my feet. My bare feet. After we lined up our shoes and tucked in our socks. From then on I tethered my desire to dance to my bare feet. Through high school and college and beyond. I did return to ballet shoes, but only to augment the rest of my body which needed the discipline.

 

In high school we were the Terpsichorean, the Terpsies. My first real audition. Even now thinking about auditioning for approval and acceptance makes me uneasy, nervous. But I quickly reframed this need for acceptance into my love of performing, on a stage, in bare feet. It has stayed with me, even if now only in memories tethered to VHS tapes, a few newspaper reviews and the periodic reunions of those I danced with.

 

I spent a number of summers nursing bare, cracked heels as I danced daily at summer workshops In Seattle and North Carolina. They, the heels, bled sometimes. I discovered pumice stone, greasy creams and white socks to protect and nourish as I slept. There was a stint or two with shoes. Performing in Cabaret in San Francisco at the York Theatre. A few jazz classes in soft, black, flexible ones. But mostly barefoot and mostly modern.

 

And then there is the barefoot beach. Endless walking on warm and sandy. Feeling my toes, messaging and crinkling. Robert doesn’t like to go barefoot, even on the beach. In Half Moon Bay last week he walked on the beach in his hiking boots. Asher ran, always the barefoot dog, frolicking through the waves. Later Robert complained about the sand and the dog; he was tired. I didn’t hesitate, perhaps without empathy, to criticize the boots. “How can you go to the beach and not take off your shoes? “

 

I knew the punchline. His mother didn’t like him to get muddy or dirty. To play in the dirt. But then she died when he was 9. He never got a chance to go barefoot.

 

Barefoot in the house, on smooth hardwood is not as safe as squeezing sand through toes sinking into cold, northern ocean. At least for me. Who looks up and momentarily forgets to notice the arrangement of objects which will undoubtedly stub or sprain or even fracture little ones? It has happened twice now. Years ago in the Pilates studio. Who manages to catch a baby one on a soft mat? Or last week, stubbed on a plastic crate which sat on my office floor? I couldn’t go to dance class for two weeks. Soaking in ice water, messaging with Arnica. Better now.

 

Pedicures. I love the soaking and the pumicing and, when I indulge, the warm wax. And no one could rub these bare feet often enough. Perhaps it is about not feeling tethered. Feeling freer, even if it starts and stops at my feet. At being barefoot on the sand, in a studio, on a stage. I loved holding Nico’s soft, bare, baby feet in the palm of my hand. And now Asher’s bare paws, even with their rough, leathery bottoms.

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