Hand to Heart
My daughter comes up to me and says, “Mom, I want to rest this summer.”
I shake my head in amazement. I look beyond her and am transported to hazy images of a time not long ago when I wanted to be ballerina, dancing in my pink tutu, crown on my head, traipsing over imagined ledges and leaping. Leaping! But money was spread too thinly over four kids and there was just no money for ballet classes, or extra classes for that matter. I can even see my mother and her worn out face, hear her “No”, touch her despair, wonder why in my looking glass I seemed nonchalant.