Shall we dance?

When I was young, I was quite a dancer. First my granduncle, whom I used to call my Daddy Toot, taught me the paso doble. “Imagine a rod passing down your spine and straightening it, making you hold your head high,” he said, “that’s the way you stand when you dance.” I thought he was the perfect leader and I the almost perfect follower. We would paso doble around the house occasionally after he had his evening scotch and water.

From there, I graduated to dancing the boogie and practicing by myself with the doorknob of my locked room door. The boogie and the cha-cha made up most of my partying history, but then, I got married young to a man who was an outstanding Latin dancer and so I learned a little mambo, a little bossa nova, some pachangga. Then on to the New York hustle and the salsa.

Those were the days before my stroke. Then suddenly on a Sunday morning close to noon I heard a male voice say, “Everything has changed.” I heard it in my head. There were and are no men in my house. I argued with it, saying, also in my head, “What do you mean? Nothing has changed. Look everything is the same.” Then my son arrived bringing lunch. I wanted to ask him why he was so late. I had gotten so hungry waiting for him. Instead I said something else, something strange that even I could not understand. Four days later, we found out that I had had a stroke. Now when I think of that day I believe the stroke happened when I heard the man speak.

It was in my right brain, according to my neurologist, and it would get in the way of my emotions. “But at least you are not paralyzed,” she said. “If it had been in your left brain, you might have been.”

That was on September 3, 2003 when I got my stroke. I recovered very slowly. Initially I just kept staring into space and thinking of nothing. That was a change for me because before then every time I stared into space I was thinking of what to do for this ad campaign or how to solve this problem. But this time, I thought of nothing. I could not read, so I decided to knit. The strangest thing is I would knit in front of the TV set, which I always turned on so I could hear voices, but I did not miss music. And certainly I did not miss dancing.

This past year, I have rediscovered music again and lately, not so suddenly, I decided to enroll in dancing lessons just for the exercise. My body was getting atrocious. It was crooked and I had long periods of sitting down and writing or painting or making jewelry but I had no exercise. I no longer enjoyed walking, so one day suddenly I thought —  why not take dance lessons? I found Studio 116 at LRI on Nicanor Garcia and decided to take their Absolute Beginner Social. The first day I was flustered, excited, had just bought my dancing shoes, but couldn’t put them on. I had a hard time bending and fastening them, and dancing shoes have thin straps that need to be fastened. Fortunately, my cousin was there and she kindly fastened my shoes.

To this day, I am working on the art of fastening them. First, one must sit in a low chair. Then one must bend and guess at the fastening because with age one is almost blind. But never mind, in the end, I get them fastened and I can go dancing.

But sometimes, it gets hard. I think maybe that is an effect of the stroke. I can turn right, but I have a difficult time turning left. My brain tells my foot to move but something happens and the process does not flow. Maybe that’s because my stroke was in my right brain, meaning the left side of my body is somewhat dead. My stomach on the left side is smaller than my stomach on my right side. Getting used to a stroke means getting accustomed to a lopsided body, but that doesn’t mean getting in the way of dancing.

So far, I have learned the swing, which to me is boogie less one step. Then I learned the salsa, which made me sweat. Now we’re learning the Argentine tango. I do pretty well on the right turns, but I flunk the left turns. My feet won’t do what my mind tells them to do. Never mind, I will practice more. I will continue taking this course in July. I enjoy dancing and I think I am getting the exercise I want in a very pleasurable, melodic way.

Okay, in my advanced stage of stroke recovery I have learned that I love to dance and possibly one day — maybe after four months of lessons — I will really be able to dance well again. Then I will hit the next problem: who do I turn to and ask: Shall we dance?

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