The Harlem School of the Arts, part two

The Harlem School of the Arts

That first week the older girls laughed at Q; when he couldn’t get the steps right and another boy trying to be helpful, ran up and took Q’s arms and physically placed them where they should be.  We started class in January, they started in September. September would have been better for dance, but way too over scheduled for us.  So, those 9 and 10-year-old girls laughed making the next two weeks extra difficult getting Q out of the door on Saturday morning.

“No, no, no!” he would say on Saturday morning, “I’m not going!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Why?!”

“Because silly people laughing at you is life, just life.  Whenever you do anything new, or different, or exceptional there are going to be people laughing at you and life is really awful if you spend it trying never to do anything new, or different or exceptional just so others won’t laugh at you.  So get your coat on, we’re going to Harlem.”

As compensation for dragging him to a class he very much didn’t want to take I let him watch nearly three hours of tv on those Saturdays.  We have a one hour of tv a day on the weekends kinda rule.  A kinda rule is one that exists more in our head than in reality given how much we break it.  Actually, let’s call it a self-imposed guideline.  In any case, that 3 hours allowed me to pay bills, do a weeks worth of laundry and pack our bags, in that order.  Life is good.  While he was nervous about dance class, he and I both loved the train ride.   A winter Saturday in the Hudson Valley seems very long if you are a boy who’s parents do not care to spend 12 hours outside on a 25 degree day.  On the way to the train station we stop at my favorite cafe for a cappuccino, and an izzy’s grapefruit drink, scones and a lunch of country ham on white bread for Q and a cheddar and chutney sandwich on whole grain for me.  Once on the train, we settle into our seats, set up our snacks and then looked at each other and sigh.  My sweet, lovely boy is such a delight on the train.  Uninterrupted conversation.  Bliss it was this hour and twenty minutes with my seven-year old son blossoming into selfhood.  There we were squeezed into the train seat with our backpacks, coats, scarves, my laptop and our snacks, without a phone ringing, or the television and laundry and chores beckoning.  Delightful, I tell you, full of big fat delight.  For my Q, my young man can talk and each week I would learn a little more about the person he is.  I would listen to his thoughts about his classmates,

“So…I ended with ‘and no one knows how they got them to stand up right without having any equipment like trucks and cranes (talking about a ‘oral report’ he gave his class about the Easter Island sculptures)  and then Olivia says SHE KNOWS how they were put up there and I say OH?!  OK!  How WERE they put up there and she says ADAM and EVE put them up there!”

“Oh.   So what did you say to Olivia?”

“I said it was HIGHLY UNLIKELY!”

Q is in a public school.  A joint first/second grade class.  He’s in first.  Do you remember first grade?  Was your teacher letting you give oral reports on Easter Island?  All the little hairs go up on the back of my neck when I hear people disparage public school and public school teachers!  We are so blessed to have Mrs. D. as Q’s teacher.  Huzzah for all the great public school teachers out there!  But, I digress…

And as we talked the Hudson River winter scenes passed us by, ice-covered branches, sunlit icy river ice bergs, houses with frosted glass and smoke coming from the chimneys.  At times the scene outside was so beautiful it literally stole my sweet boy’s breath away and he would pause, turn his head to the window and be mesmerized for 30 minutes or more.  At those times, as he stared out the window, I stared at him.  Heaven there in the train, Heaven to be able to watch him staring in wonder at the water, the trees, the mountains.  I drank in the seven-year oldness  of him.

The third week he walked slowly, reluctantly into class.  I watched as he stood at the back of the group.  As i stood there a father and his young son came running down the hall.  The little boy hopped on a chair as his father dropped their bags on the floor and leaned down to take off his son’s boots and help him put on his sneakers.  This sweet little boy and his father with the easy smile and the kind face.  They are hispanic, the son is 6 or seven years old, with brown , straight hair fringing his face.  He has the most beautiful large brown round eyes and his fathers sweet wide smile.  The little boy is smaller than other boys his age, I imagine he must be the smallest boy in his class and his spine is curved rather than straight and sends one shoulder sloping down  and the other going up and to the front of his little body.  He is thin and slight and while I think he and Q are the same age, Q is taller and bigger all around.  The little boy’s shoes are on and is laces tied and he bounds off of the chair as his father steps back to get out of his way.  His son runs into the class with enthusiasm and a smile but as he gets close to the group I notice he hangs in back like Q does and then he shuffles his feet and looks back at his dad.  His father gives him a smile and a hand gesture meant to say ‘go on, go on to the middle, or the front of the group, you’ll be fine.”  My heart aches with the beauty of it.  The rush of life and a father takes time to bring his son to dance class, to smile at and encourage him.

“He’s shy” the father says to me with an accent a smile.

“So’s mine.”

Class has not started yet and I call Q to me.

“What?” He says to me annoyed now because the other children, whose mothers all already stationed in their folding chairs in the hall are not bothering their children.

“See that little boy that just came in?  He’s shy.  Go over and introduce yourself.”

“What?! ” He looks at me pleadingly, “I can’t do that.  I’m shy.”

“I know that’s why I’m telling you to introduce yourself.  When you do, then you’ll have a friend and he’ll have a friend and it will be easer.  Think about his shyness and try to make him feel happy and you’ll see you will probably end up feeling happy too.”

He stared at me and then turned to walk into the studio and slowly walked up to the little boy until his shoulder was near the little boy’s.  I saw him lean over and say something.  No response, the little boy continued to stare at the front of the class as the teacher, a young skinny guy with a fur hat on and central casting hip-hop garb started to set up his i-pod.  He stared at the boy for a couple more seconds and then leaned over again and said something to which the boy looked at him a bit startled and then gave Q a wide beautiful grin and then whispered back to Q.

Not wanting to incur the wrath of the dance police I stepped out of the classroom and shut the door.  The father of the sweet little boy with the curved spine smiled at me and I was for a moment in a perfect place.  A place where hard-working, hard loving parents somehow manage to fit in a hip hop dance class in among everything else.  We found a couple of folding chairs between the diva table and the rolling coat rack.  Children milled around talking about their world with the proper drama.   “Oh My God!!!” was heard more than once and each time I would look up to see two or three children some in leotards some not but all, all of them talking as much with their hands and their arms and their bodies as with their mouths.  This is not so much a wall flower place.  This is tumble-down place with stained ceiling tiles and bathroom stall doors that do not close that is infused with so much beauty, life, loveliness that the heart aches at the fullness of it all.

Think you know Harlem?  Think you know life in the city?  Think you’ve seen it on TV?

I pulled out my laptop as the boy’s father began to talk into his cell phone and look at his watch.  He and I for an hour waiting on our children.  Hip Hop Dance class.  If when I was 12 or 13 years old, that time in my life where I would sit and daydream about my life as an adult; if I could have looked through a window and seen a small vignette of myself at 45 years old, there in Harlem, on an old metal folding chair, what would I have thought?

How lovely that we cannot plan our lives.  How perfect that life just blooms up into being.