everything

Every year, the woman’s sister-in-law sends her a Facebook Memory video of her daughter dancing when she was four. The dance her daughter does is simple. She is outside on a little backyard patio. There is a stool and a chair a few feet apart from each other. Her daughter moves smoothly from position to position, always pausing with her hand touching one seat and her toes touching the opposite seat. Her daughter does this to the sounds of the family milling about, talking, and some light tinkling music from inside the house. Her daughter is focused, light, dreamlike. She moves, touches, touches, pauses. Moves, touches, touches, pauses. Her body stretches in different shapes each time she finds a different way to fill the space between the stool and the chair. Sometimes, she has to stretch farther than she thinks she can to get her tiny toe to finally tap the end of one of the seats while her fingers barely reach the opposite one. The video shows the beautiful movement problem she has given herself, the Rubik’s Cube number of ways she chooses to solve it, and the effort it takes to get there. It’s like watching the brain, body, and heart all converse in silence.

Every year, her sister-in-law sends this Facebook Memory video to her and every year, they say to each other that this is the most brilliant dance they have ever seen, a conceptual masterpiece, and the fact that it is done by a four-year-old is beyond comprehension, and isn’t she amazing, and isn’t life amazing, and aren’t we lucky to be here, to experience this, to share this? This is one of her favorite days of the year, the day she and her sister-in-law remember as if they had forgotten and marvel as if they had overlooked, that this is it. This is everything.