Fork in the Road at 8-Years-Old
Keeping memories alive is important–even if they aren’t witnessed or captured by a camera. I started dance classes at the age of 3 and took to them like a “duck to water”, as they say. As I progressed, the number of classes required per week increased. When I was 8 years old, during a period of financial struggle for my parents, my mother sat me down for a serious conversation. She shared that we were going to have to cut back on some things to make ends meet and wanted to know how much I loved my ballet classes. I don’t remember her exact words, but they were something akin to ‘if you love them enough to think you might want to be a dancer when you grow up, we won’t cut any of your classes. We’ll find a way to make it work’.
My 8-year-old mind interpreted this in a way that my mother didn’t intend. And that was when I decided I was going to become a professional dancer someday. I felt the weight of the decision and hesitated before answering, fully aware that I was only 8 and that most 8-year-olds didn’t have to decide for REAL what they were going to be when they grew up. But, if Mom was asking me to decide now and was ready to make sacrifices to make it happen, I was going to commit to it. So, I did. And I did become a professional ballet dancer. And so did my two sisters.
Years later, when I shared this memory with my mother, she had no recollection of the conversation. She had not been was asking her 8-year-old daughter to make a lifelong commitment. She was just trying to support my passion to the best of her ability. I’m sure she never dreamed that I would hear it the way I did or that the question would lead to 3 of her 4 children becoming professional dancers in major ballet companies.
There are no photographs or home movies of that consequential conversation. It’s not even a conversation that my mother remembered taking place, nor were there any witnesses. But it shaped the rest of my life and it is a memory that I want to keep alive for my kids and theirs. It was a defining moment upon which every decision I made after hinged upon. It is part of their stories as much as it is mine.
Who knows what path I would have taken, or my sisters, if I had not committed myself to a promise I believed I had made to my mother? I love looking back at my life and seeing where choices led me to change course or narrow my options. Each decision we have made in life has brought us to where we are now. I think it is enlightening to reflect on them and see the beautiful way in which we create the lives we live. There are numerous ways to keep those memories alive: by talking about them, writing them down, or sharing them on video. Dickens Brothers and Lifeazine are two businesses of several of which I’m aware that can help you record your stories. Or if you’d like to create a book with text and photos, but don’t know where to begin, please reach out to Ducks in a Row Photo Solutions, and I can help you create it.
Can you think of a moment in your life in which you knew you were at a fork on your road? How have you kept that memory alive?
