On Memory, the Body, and Holidays Past
In “Holy Night,” an episode in season four of The West Wing, the character Toby Ziegler and his estranged father stop to listen to the Whiffenpoofs sing “O’ Holy Night.” Toby’s father speaks in Yiddish. When Toby responds by asking, “What?” He replies:
“I’m having the strongest memory.”
It’s a moment I’ve relived over and over again this year. One of the ways the grief of COVID has seeped into my life is through pangs of nostalgia; deep longing for the way things were. Not just nine months ago, but from past versions of myself and my life. Often, when I’ve allowed myself to go into this place of remembering, I react in a visceral way. So many of my tears this year were born out of this grief and longing for anything that was different than the constant struggle to just get through each day and week during this pandemic.
More than once, this has happened on accident in front of my three-year-old son, Brecken; sometimes while watching a favorite movie or reading a book from my childhood with him. And if (when) the tears well up, he touches my face, and he says, “Mommy, you crying. It’s okay, Mommy. What’s wrong?” And each time, I’ve not been able to say anything other than: “I’m having the strongest memory.”
Over the last few weeks, I’ve worked to complete a freelance video design job: compiling a virtual showcase of variations from The Nutcracker for the Flint School of Performing Arts, where I trained as a young dancer (the school my mom directs today). It has been…an experience. I have been doing this work from a place of profound love and gratitude…and living deeply in my memories as I put everything together.
And I’m also aware that as I do this work, I feel deeply connected to the young dancers, most of whom I’ve never met— but there they are, on my computer screen, dancing the steps I spent hours learning and re-learning. Except they are doing these steps alone, in a studio, wearing as mask, while their teacher films them from across the room. The warm lights of Whiting Auditorium in Flint, Michigan are not shining in their eyes, throwing them off their pirouettes; the Flint Symphony Orchestra is not in the pit; there are no costumes, lovingly designed and cared for throughout the years to help each dancer transform into a character from a land made of candy and sweets; the studio does not have that backstage smell, of sawdust and electricity and makeup and fabric.
But here they are, living deeply in their bodies, connecting their brains to their muscles as they trigger a sequence of micro-adjustments that will harness the power of gravity and the human body to sustain an arabesque just long enough. I did that too. Right there, on those counts, in that sequence of steps, and I felt that same surge in my chest as the music swelled there.
This project put me in a place of continuous remembering, woven together with grief. Not for the past life I led, but for the many things COVID has taken from us, and the uncertainty of what we’ll rebuild and reimagine when we emerge from this strange, liminal space. And in the same breath where I grieve for what we’ve lost, I am also immensely grateful for the possibilities that could come in the after. I think that’s what this project came to mean for me, as well. When we strip away the things we believed made it special, we realize: yes, they did. But they don’t mean anything without the heart of that ecosystem: the dancers, and their dancing.
I’ve realized that in every “I’m having the strongest memory,” I wasn’t connecting with anything other than what I felt like to be in my body in that moment. Those memories are imprinted on my muscles and bones, and they are with us wherever (and whenever) we go.
