Go-go, lead with your head, crazy legs
Children dance. Toddlers and infants dance. Even in the womb, movements of the new life can be described as dance. Our son would issue dramatic kicks. When my husband and I went to see Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads movie, I felt our son moving throughout the film.
Our daughter, born four years later, rarely stopped moving in the womb, and I remember waking in the middle of the night when she was still. My body tensed and I woke Gary. In moments, she wiggled, and I breathed again.
As toddlers, our kids had their own habits of moving. Our son would run down the sidewalk, pumping his left arm and fist, saying “Go! Go!” Our daughter ran head first through the house with her arms trailing behind her, like wings. She led with her head the way ice skaters lead with their butts. Her movements fit her. Head-first into life.
Our toddler granddaughter has many dance moves. The first I noted were her “crazy legs," a term coined by her mom, as she recorded Nova’s rhythmic hips and legs while lying on her back after having her diaper changed. To me, her legs and hips moved in figure eights. Nova has expanded upon those crazy eights and I now use them when I dance. Nova taught me that figure eights can be applied to one’s whole body and are especially fun with the hips and legs.
Life in motion is how I view movement —alone, with others, and with the environment—as nourishing my relationship with my body, with others, and with the world.
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