Fenix Drum and Dance Company

The first time I knew my daughter Margaret was inside me I was sitting in a theater in Oakland, surrounded by a wall of African drumming.  I had taken my parents and then seven-year-old daughter Ciara to a dramatic symposium of dancing and music of the African diaspora.  The first performance was a long parade of djembe and congas that began outside. The sound gradually increased until the marchers flowed down the aisles and onto the stage and it felt like we were in a room of drum, in a womb of drum. Like we were at the dawn of time and the end of time and beating along with the heartbeat of the universe.  Dramatic I know, but that was how it was.

And then there was inside of me a quiet beating back. I must have been about three weeks pregnant.  I didn't have any symptoms yet, of course.  But I knew.  I placed my hands on my belly. You’re there, I said.  Welcome to the drums.

When Margaret was an infant, my teacher DeLisa Branch-Nealy in Berkeley held her as we danced in class.  Margaret used to lie down and press her cheek to the floor to feel the drums.  When she began to walk she bounced up and down in perfect rhythm. Then we moved to Sacramento and left dance and drums behind.  Until this year.

Why have I waited so long to write about Fenix Drum and Dance?  It has been seven months from the first time my Margaret and I tried our first class.  Since then we've spent almost every Saturday night in the studio and performed in public twice. Now Margaret has decided to do the drum class too.  Her favorite is Djembe.  She wants one for Christmas.

Margaret has no fear in dancing and drumming. She jumps into the circle at the end of class for extemporaneous solo numbers.  She loves performing on stage.  Now she loves drums as well.  She sits in a circle among her classmates, mostly grown-ups, her face fixed in concentration as she learns to slap, bass, tone.  Last Saturday guest teacher Lansana Kouyate from Guinea taught the class a complex rhythm called Tiruba. She learned how to do the dance in the next hour.

When we go to the studio and enter the drum sound nothing matters but music.  Do you understand what that means? Nothing matters but music. That moment when we cross the threshold into the studio is the sweetest moment of my entire week. Anxiety is nothing.  It can’t even get through the door. Why haven't I written about this before? Because I wasn't ready yet.  Because it feels a lot like church.

Fenix Drum and Dance Company is run by Angela James and her daughter Olivia Yasmin James.  Check out the website here. They welcome beginners and have a beautiful way of making sure all ability levels have fun and are challenged at the same time.  You should come dance with us.  It's a bargain for all you get and you would like it.  Bring your son and daughter along too.

When we first started taking class I was looking for some exercise, something to share with my kid, a return to the uplift I remembered from African dance and music.  I never expected to receive such a quality education in dance and culture.  I never expected to meet so many new friends.

I am grateful to Fenix for bringing my daughter and me together again over drums. Now she begs me to take drum class with her.  She holds out her hands and says, Come on Mommy.  Welcome to the drums.

That's Margaret in the green head wrap. Thank you so much Miss Angela James for the photo.  

An Eight-Year-Old's Workout

I brought Margaret to the doc last week for a check up.

"How many minutes a day does your daughter exercise?" the check-in lady asked me.  Clipboard in hand.

"I don't know.  She's eight years old.  She plays."

"We suggest an hour a day." The check-in lady didn't want any of my lip. I conceded to an hour a day.  Sure.  My baby works out an hour a day. More or less.

On our way out I noticed signs for an obesity prevention workshop for the twelve and under crowd.  You could sign up your kid to spend an hour sitting around a table with a bunch of other kids while an adult talked about exercise.

It's easy for me to be snarky about an obesity workshop for kids because my kids are skinny.  We eat healthy foods most of the time but I'm not one of those no junk food moms.  Not by a looooooong mile. My daughters eat what they do want (within reason) and don't have to eat what they don't want.  It's a simple philosophy that costs me very little by way of parenting effort.

Still, that exercise question bothered me.  How many minutes a day does my little one exercise?  I didn't really know the answer.  I am her mother and I should know the answer to a basic health question.

So I decided to find out.  My husband and teenager are on a five-day backpacking excursion too strenuous for an eight-year-old, so it's just Margaret and me.  Hanging out.  Spending time.

I now know the answer to the exercise question.

On Saturday, we went to Yoga in the park for an hour.  I thought that would be enough exercise until dance class that night, but Margaret disagreed.  We had to go to the local public pool.  We have to go when they are open or else we'll be sad on days when they are closed, she reasoned.  So we went to the pool.  Margaret swam for two hours straight, practicing the butterfly stroke.  Which she kept making me demonstrate for her over and over so that she could see how to do it.  Mommy demonstrating.  Margaret practicing.  Demonstrate.  Practice.  Back and forth across the pool.

"I'm getting ready for the Olympics," she said.

We got home in time to dress for dance and go to the studio.  We take African dance together.  I thought she'd be too tired for a rigorous class, but no.  She practiced and danced like a crazy and then volunteered for a solo. So then I decided to do a solo.  It was a lot of dancing. 

For dinner she wanted McDonald's, so we went for a treat.  We can only go when her sister is out of the house because my teenager gives us such a hard time for eating fast food that it just isn't worth it.  Then we had to watch the Olympic trials before bed.  Margaret likes watching people exercise.

She had her post-Mass Sunday donut this morning, and then insisted on roller blading for two hours (the dog and I trailed after on foot in the flames of her wake). As I write this she's out in the living room jumping around and dance practicing while watching t.v.  In a minute she'll go play Dance Dance on our friend's Wii for an hour.  Or more.

Keeping up is hard to do.

Tomorrow she wants to skate more.  Maybe bike ride.  On Tuesday, she tells me she needs to go swimming again. She also needs to practice shooting baskets so she can be really really good next basketball season.  She needs to practice dance.  She needs to take long walks to practice for her own backpacking trip with her dad.  She needs to needs to needs to be moving.  All the time.

You want to know how many minutes a day Margaret exercises? A million minutes a day.  My daughter exercises a million minutes a day.

I should know.

I'm exhausted.

Earthmaker

Earthmaker, our mother,

Covers the ground with flowers

And breaks open the soil to make way

For the sprout bending its head

Dreaming of the sun.

She releases the seeds of Aspens

That dream of their someday leaves,

Shivering in the wind,

Their undersides silvery and flashing.

Earthmaker, our mother,

Holds in her embrace

Her giant Sequioa sons

As well as the memory resting in the fossils of their prehistoric brothers.

She holds the buried acorns that will be her

Sturdy Oaken daughters,

As well as the memory of those long ago first fern-like plants

About which so little is known.

Earthmaker knows.

Earthmaker, our mother

Sees every child of hers grow or not grow.

She mourns the ones who leave her embrace

She wraps herself in a fourfold robe of night sky, fire, water and loam.

And nurses her sadness for the lost

In the old soul company of the stars.

The love of Earthmaker, our mother

Like every mother,

Is never less than a mountain.

The strength of every mother’s love

Contains the force of oceans,

The weight of seas,

The might of rivers in flash flood,

The depth of springs,

The quiet endlessness of acquifers beneath clashing tectonic plates.

This is love that outlasts death,

This is love with a geologic age,

This is love that embraces every child,

Found or lost

And takes the lost one, and holds him up to the stars

Where he will take his place among them.

Wasteland

I thought apocalypse jokes were funny before I was in one.

Knock knock, who's there?

No answer.

I don't have answers for anything anymore because for me, the world that I knew ended last April when Rachel's baby died of an umbilical cord accident while she was in labor.  It was an accident that no one could have prevented or predicted.  

Rachel's baby's death was an accident like a meteor falling on your head and killing you dead as you were going out to get the mail. You could not have prevented that.  There isn't even anyone for your loved ones to rage against in the aftermath. Who are they going to hate? God?  The Universe? That doesn't work. Your loved ones aren't simpletons.

So all the disappointment and pain and disbelief lay waste to everything anyone felt was true about safety and security and purpose.  You can plan and do the right things and make all the wise decisions and still you could end up in a wasteland.  Choose your own adventure. But sometimes you don't get to choose. Not when Oliver died and this summer that was supposed to be the summer of a newborn boy is the summer of desolate nights and me reaching across the parched earth for my friend Rachel who didn't deserve this.

Things go wrong in pregnancy.  Children die of stupid things for no reason.  I knew this.  I'm grown.  But for it to happen, though.  For it to happen.

Nothing to say about it.  Nothing to do for it.  Nothing but reaching across the sad ground for my friend. Giving the wasteland the finger. Wishing our arms weren't empty.

Wishing for life.

This Is For The Class Of 2012

This is for the class of two oh one two

Mrs. Wanket has had her eye on you.

We read Malcolm X  and Catcher in the Rye

We discussed Shakespeare’s Othello and Into the Wild

We talked about the hero and the great archetypes

You embark now on the Journey and this ain't no hype

You are the hero of your own journey that starts right now today

You have all of the qualities you need so hooray.

You are strong and you are brave and you know you look good

You have both kinds of smarts: I’m talking book and ‘hood.

But listen to me now, let the old Gatekeeper speak

You must always be mighty and never be weak.

There will be Monsters in your path so you better watch out

There are those who would keep you from what you are about

There are Monsters with heads that might look good for a minute, that’s true

But listen to your heart, no sex drugs or alcohol for you!

Listen to the Wise Men and Women, your elders and your teachers

Some of us sitting beside you right now in these bleachers.

We love you and trust you to be honest and strong

Though the Divine Journey you are beginning may get hecka long.

Study hard my heroes, and hit those books

Do all of your work and stay away from the hooks

Of cheaters and haters and those who tell lies

Stay awake and alert, and please open your eyes.

The wide world is so beautiful so full of treasure and light

The wide world has your name on it, your future is bright.

Claim your adventure, class of 2012

Do your best in all things for the love of your friends and yourselves

You are my heroes, so gorgeous and true,

You are forever my heart, class of 2 thousand one two.