Shifting My Weight

"Tap is easy," Candy says. "But shifting your weight, that's hard." This is not the first bit of life wisdom I've learned from my tap teacher. But it's the most recent.

"It's like gymnastics," she continues. "Gymnastics is easy. Landing is hard."

Well, I don't know about that. But I do know that hopping on my left foot, flapping with my right (or as my tap buddy Denise would say, "falapping," since we give it two beats), landing on the ball of that foot before transferring weight to my left ball, heel and right ball, heel — yes, that is difficult.

In fact, balance is the most challenging part of tap class, apart from the traffic I must drive through to get there. And what makes balance tricky is letting go. To transfer weight from one foot to the other, one must, for a single terrifying moment, not have weight anywhere. One must leap into the void.

It's not unlike a trapeze artist or a mid-life career changer. Yes, there is practice, preparation, mastery. But there is also the hand off, the letting go.

I'm thinking there's a point where shifting my weight will cease to frustrate and begin to exhilarate. I'm still waiting for that to happen.

(A tap class in Iowa, 1942, courtesy Wikipedia)