I’ve been feeling the earth’s gravitational pull more than usual over the last week. My assumption is that I just haven’t taken care of myself physically or allowed myself the full release of artistic expression. I was overdue for a dance class!

Yesterday morning I woke up and headed to ballet, where there was a large proportion of women over thirty years old. In performing artist speak, they were senior citizens. Though it was a regular ballet class where everyone was expected to wear flats – or allowed to wear socks, in some cases  - there were two students wearing pointe shoes. It’s common for students first learning pointe to wear the “pink coffins” for the beginning halves of ballet technique classes. The purpose is two-fold: to familiarize one’s feet and muscles with the shoes and to break them in. That there were two ladies en pointe was no big deal. Seeing them just made me wonder if I could still cut it.

Especially because one of the ladies en pointe was also one of the “senior citizens.” The woman was probably 60-years old or older, a super cute little Japanese grandma of a lady. She was shorter than my mom, with more aged skin, but she was wearing new pointe shoes. I immediately adored her.

Because I didn’t reach the willing creepiness necessary to ask her out for tea after class, I started making up stories about her in my head. If my Asian radar was functioning as normal and she was, indeed, Japanese (more specifically, Japanese American) then she probably grew up in an internment camp. The age of the remaining internment camp survivors is basically anywhere between retired-and-beyond.

Let’s assume my assumptions were correct. How amazing is it that she’s over 60 and dancing on pointe?

Have you any idea the kind of physical shape you need to be in to perform or even practice pointe? Of course you have to have perfect ankle strength. This would imply that you don’t foresee issues of osteoporosis or arthritis in your near future. Your balance needs to be impeccable, which is an obvious indication of impeccable core strength. And of course, you have to be willing to learn all over again, because those shoes are so foreign to what we humans were built to do, you cannot assume that you can hop from Reef sandals to Bloch Serenades. (Which are what I wear! Whee!)

How impressed would you be to learn that she grew up in internment and is now strapping on the most difficult and demanding footwear known to anyone in the performing arts? Don’t you just want to be her?

Because I do. I wanted to take a photo of her, give her a hug, and ask her what her personal history is. In my head I imagined her driving back to a house with pictures of grandkids hanging on the walls. Or maybe she’s going home to a partner she’s been with for decades. Or maybe she’s living independently. Or maybe she’s on her way to pilates or yoga.

From the little I knew about her there is nothing that I dislike. She’s grown into a ripe old age and enriching her own life with something she seems to enjoy. Whatever she had done in her past had helped her stay clairvoyant through now, and she can ignore whatever expectations there might be for her demographic that at any point she should become just a bystander and observer.

I want to be like that. I want to be that old lady taking dance class, wearing a black and green striped dress, warming up next to 20-somethings, wearing pointe shoes!

Editor’s Note: Fantastic side reading if you’re interesting in JAs and concentration camps: Japanese American animators affected by one of the worst decisions the U.S. has ever made, discussed at Cartoon Brew. Guess who sent me this one?

On another aside, I actually read Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror for a course titled Japanese Americans and Concentration Camps. My take on the book? She is one of the few women that I will ever refer to as a C U Next Tuesday.