The No Dancing Rule

For as long as I can remember, dancing is just one of those activities that I'm no good at. Sure, I love it. Music moves me. The problem is that it doesn't move me in an attractive, graceful and coordinated way. There's something called rhythm, or so my husband has tried to explain to me. There's something called beat, another concept my brain can't seem to process. I like to think of myself as average smart, or at least not slobbering slow, but somewhere in the process of making me, God forgot to connect the part of my brain that would make me grasp the sound of music and coordinate it to the movements of my body. I swear he skipped that part all together.

Ok, so now you're wondering why I'm talking about my non-existing dancing skills when I should be telling you a story about my daughters. Well, now that I am a mother, I realized that it comes in handy to look silly, if not like I'm having a spasm, when I try to dance. It makes my children laugh. So for the first time in my life, I'm not embarrassed to dance in front of other people. They really get a kick out of it, Victoria cracks up, Eli follows along and gets silly too, thinking I'm trying to make her laugh, She doesn't know this is how I actually dance; she thinks I do it on purpose.

But even the silliest of moments can become hazardous when you combine two small girls and a rhythmically challenged mother. If you think I'm exaggerating, read on.

Last night, to keep them entertained while I made dinner, Javier played a CD for them; one that has music that Elizabeth loves. She can (and will) listen to it over and over and over without getting bored or tired of it. It is so up beat and fun that I decided (disaster strikes) to dance. I didn't just dance though, I made a point of exaggerating my movements, twirling and jumping around all at the same time. If you have been paying attention to the beginning of this blog, you can easily figure out that this is not a good idea. Ever.

Victoria stood in her crib laughing and Eli began to follow me. She danced a little then tried to hug me from behind, but did this at the same time that I was bringing my arms down...how could I have known that my elbow would fall exactly on her cheek bone, instantly swelling it and cutting it. Can anyone imagine anything worse than hurting your own child to the point of making her bleed? My heart sank as she began to cry. She's tough in the sense that she doesn't easily cry when she gets hurt. But this one really did hurt.

The fuss that came after that is kind of blurry, I know I reacted quickly and put something cold on her face for the swelling, but after that all I could do was cry. I'm a softy, I admit it. All that I could do was apologize to her, hug her and feel like crap. I was feeling like the worst mother in the world for almost giving my daughter her first shiner. Almost, I say because at least I stopped the swelling.

Now, I don't know if I fall into the category of a martyr mom, but I can say that a few minutes later she was making herself pretty in front of the mirror, wearing her Cinderella dress, princess shoes, lipstick (which she's not supposed to) and brushing her hair. This while I was in the kitchen making dinner, trying not to cry and still beating myself up for not being careful enough.

Does that make me a martyr mom? I'm not sure, but what I am sure of is that there's no worse feeling than hurting the person you spend your life trying to protect. Physically or emotionally, neither is better or worse than the other. Specially if you could have avoided this by simply not doing that thing that you already know you don't do so well.

But I am a lucky mother. Elizabeth is a resilient and forgiving girl, as most girls are so I'm sure the wound will heal and there will probably be no visible scarring, but as far as I'm concerned, NO MORE DANCING. That's it. I've given up. I can live without it and I'm so sure that no one in my family will miss it.

A little later, I held Eli in my arms and reminded her (because it's not the first time I've had to tell her this) that she should never sneak up behind me to hug me because I could accidentally step on her (or something worse, as we found out that night). She turned to me with a puzzled look and said, "I wasn't trying to hug you mom, I was trying to stop you."

Oh. Ok. Point well taken.