When I was four years old, I knew I wanted to be a dancer. I don’t remember the exact day, nor precisely what prompted me into aspiring for that particular job. It isn’t exactly clear to me how the idea got into my mind that it was possible, or even how my parents knew to take me to the correct school that would push me in the right direction. I don’t know if I was eager, or if I was shy, hiding between my mom’s legs. The only things I remember of that first year are baby-blue leotards, round cheeks, and flyaway hairs coming out of our buns.
My mom immigrated to the United States when she was fourteen years old, first to Long Island, later, to Queens, New York. She quickly discovered a passion for art, for fashion, and for music. She flourished, learning first the basics of art, and then winning awards for her paintings, fashion designs, receiving top marks in her architectural drawings. Her mother was a seamstress at the right-hand of some of New York City’s top designers, such as Gloria Sachs, Charlotte Ford, and Pamela Dennis.
My mom was definitely fashion forward. A one way ticket into New York’s Fashion District, Seventh Avenue, seemed to be inevitable, especially with an acceptance letter to Parsons and a partial scholarship tucked under her belt. Sadly, a seamstress’ salary didn’t cover the room, board, books, supplies, and transportation costs that came along with a prestigious school.
My grandmother wasn’t supportive of her, declaring that the industry was too competitive, the career choice too flighty. With no incentive to stay in the United States, and a yearning for the tropics of her homeland, she left for El Salvador, only coming back to take a position at the Embassy in Washington D.C. When my sister and I were born, my mom vowed to never stop us in achieving our dreams. And she hasn’t.
Ballet was a game. You’d arrive, run around with other little girls to fun music, and then
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go home. As I got older, though, I began to understand how the games were connected to a certain step, how certain movement could be applied any other position, and how the music was giving us directions on how to move; fast or slow, sharp or soft.
When I began to put the pieces together was when I really began to love dancing. The music seemed to connect the ideas in my head to the movements of my body. I’d twirl and leap and run around in a demon-child frantic sort of way, getting so dizzy I’d fall over, jumping so high I’d fall down, trying so hard to be beautiful, but overreaching, like a child playing in her mom’s makeup case. In this way, I learned to dance.
Technically, I might not have been dancing, but I was trying. I was focused; all my efforts always went into ballet. Other girls would quit; the classes went too long and became too intense, but I loved it. I stayed, still trying. I missed birthday parties and school dances and missed my friends but I kept dancing.
Even when we couldn’t really afford it and my dad would be saying maybe this year we aren’t going to do it, my mom would tell him that yes we are, and then tried her best to make it happen. We sold the truck one year (though she insists they were thinking of selling it anyways). We shopped at thrift shops instead of at the mall, the clearance rack instead of the front of the stores. I kept dancing, trying harder than everyone else but still not the best, never noticed -- not until now.
My old friends, childhood friends, would complain that I was always at ballet and that I never spent time with them anymore; their moms told mine that I was a bad friend. And if I was, I’m sorry. I have a dream, though, and as far-fetched and unrealistic as it may seem to people, I know it’s going to happen. I have people behind me who want me to succeed, even if they didn’t know they did until right now. This, which is the one true, steady, constant fixation in my whole life of fifteen years, is going to happen. I know it is. I am talented. I am lucky. I am blessed. I am trying to succeed. I am succeeding.
