Dance with the Dolly

 Eight homemade paper dolls, holding hands, dressed to the nines, balancing on my table. My favorite of all has a swell to the belly. She wears tights with a different design on each leg, and a little black dress. The dress is unassuming, but its skirt flips out to the other side, already dancing to a rhythm we can't hear. Multicolored hair scraggles down beside her face, as if she forgot to care. But that doesn't matter because her little black dress, swinging with joy and movement, reminds me that that's all we need in life: joy and movement. Plus love, of course.

 

When I become queen, the children will be taught love, joy, movement, poetry, art, and the music of the soul.

 

And this dancing dolly will be part of it all: we'll dance to our own beat, our own rhythm, feet on the ground, bare feet on the solid dirt, feeling them extend into the earth, feeling them connect with where we are, where we came from. We'll dance until we can't dance any more. That little black dress isn't essential, but we'll all wear something that swings, because even a three-year-old knows the joy of twirling in a dress that swirls around her legs.

 

Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor   

www.anntudor.ca
http://scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com