Dancing My Dreams

by Marie Delgado Travis

When I was a child, I contracted childhood polio.  Thankfully, it was a mild case and I recovered fully.  No one would ever guess that I had once been paralyzed from the waist down.  Only I considered it a "handicap."  In fact,  when a college friend asked if I would be his ballroom dance partner,  I thought that he was out of his mind.  Couldn't he see that I was the only Puerto Rican in the world without a sense of rhythm?

I continued to cast myself as "Wallflower" for the next thirty years. One day, a girlfriend invited me to attend a ballroom dance competition as a spectator.  One of the dance teachers competing there with his students caught my attention.  He made each of his studentss look so beautiful.  I didn't know anything about dance, but I saw something special in him.  When he danced "Latin." He looked Latin.  When he was performing a Viennese waltz, he looked Austrian.  For each dance, he not only executed "steps," he assumed its unique character. 

I couldn't help but congratulate him after the competition.  "Everything you danced tonight was perfection," I exclaimed, forgetting momentarily that I'm supposedly a very shy person.  "Really?" he asked. "Why, thank you!"   His modest surprise made him all the more appealing.  I noted his name from the program and an unexpected wish welled within me:   "I wish I could take lessons with him."

Time passed and one morning I lay in bed, daydreaming.  "You know, you said you wanted to take dance lessons with that teacher," I reminded myself.  "But you've done nothing to find him and see if he has an opening."  I thought that dance would be an excellent way to praise God and His creation.  "Okay, God, let's do it!"  

I made a mental note to look the dance teacher's number in the telephone directory later in the day.  But I didn't need to!   When I turned on my computer less than an hour later, there was already an e-mail waiting for me.  The same friend I had attended the dance competition with two years before had forwarded a list of events in town that week.  There, in the middle of the e-mail text, was the dance teacher's contact information.  All I had to do was put my wish out into the universe. 

I was accepted, of course, as his student.  One of his pupils "just happened" to be moving out of town... For two years, I enjoyed taking dance lessons with him. But suddenly, my health began to deteriorate.  Along with glaucoma and hypertension, I developed back problems.  I learned it was degenerative disc disease and worried that it might be related to post-polio syndrome. 

Competing had always been a very distant dream.  I had to ask myself at this point,  "If not now,  when?"  Asking God not to make me too much of an embarrassment to my teacher, I traveled with his team to participate in the Vegas Showdown earlier this year.  My sister and her family live in Las Vegas and I wanted them to see me dance.  Even my Mom flew in from Puerto Rico for the event.

I saw my performance during the competition as a way of thanking God for His many blessings.  I honestly didn't expect to receive anything other than a token gift for participation.  I was stunned to win 8 first place awards for individual dances and two trophies in multi-dance categories.  By the end of the competition, I had ranked 10th of all of the female competitors at Bronze level.  And, to make the Cinderella story complete, the points I earned placed me in the top 20 percent of the circuit my dance teacher belongs to--nationwide.  My position will drop throughout the year, since I will only be able to participate in a few events.  But even that brief moment of glory was beyond my most ambitious dreams.

Since dancing is such a part of my culture, I must have absorbed at least a little through osmosis.  And turns out my dance teacher "just happens" to have been National Champion--three times, undefeated.  I didn't know it when I first cast an eye on him.  He is literally one of the best dance teachers in the world.  But I know the key ingredient was simply asking God to dance with me.

MARIE DELGADO TRAVIS is an award-winning author.  She writes poetry and prose in English and Spanish.  Visit  her web site.