I smirked at the wildfire spread of zumba, a mix of latin and international music and dance moves used in group fitness classes, and tossed the idea aside.  That is, until this morning, when I found myself standing in the second row of a Saturday morning zumba class.

The lights were dimmed, my body was still sore from a kickboxing class a few days previously, and the room was full.  I was fairly confident about my dancing skills.  I’ve always hidden my natural love of dance and moved in the privacy of my home.  As a little girl, the living room was my stage.  Years of cheerleading incorporated tumbling and dance classes and now, with my son in a high chair, I turn the music up loud in the kitchen, and dance for him every morning.

It was a room of all women.  All ages from teens to late sixties.  There were women of nearly every size and color.  Women in regular clothes, workout clothes, even Indian dresses.  Hair was swept up in ponytails or loose and free.  It was like a small sample of the world’s women.  The room was wall to wall mirrors and seeing so many women giggling and practicing different dance moves made me smile.

I tried to remember the last time I danced an organized or choreographed dance with a group of people.  Probably since my cheerleading days.  Sure I danced at weddings and parties, but nothing in sync.  I was doubtful on so many levels if I would enjoy it.  Would it be a decent workout?  Would I be able to to do the moves?  Would I look like an idiot?

Bri, the instructor, made it more than a zumba class.  She brought in a quote and announced, “Decide to take action!”  I wasn’t sure why she was bringing in quotes – even extras for some of us to take with us – when it was just a fitness class.  It would soon make sense, but I had my doubts.  “Whatever you are carrying with you, let it out,” she kept exclaiming through the warm-up salsa, through an infusion of hip-hop moves, and energized stretches.  “Take action and let it out.  Say good-bye and do something else instead. You’re here right now, so be here and let it go.”

Zumba started resembling something like a physical therapy session.

For the next fifty minutes, we moved our hips, legs, arms, and shoulders in rotations, thrusts, punches, and swings in a colorful array of I-don’t-even-know-what.  But something happened at the halfway point that I could barely believe.

A room full of strangers, all women, sweating and at first stiff with uncertainty, began to laugh, and loosen up.  Perhaps it was bumping our cute booties in the air and Bri exclaiming, “Your body is a wonder, shake it up and love it!” in a non-corny kind of way that helped even the oldest of women try to shake their gluteus maximus high in the air.  And then she choreographed a dance that had us bunch together and turn to the side mirrors.  She stood in the front, dancing, while we followed, “Look at us!”  and as we trod and skipped, jumped and flew our limbs, I stopped and stared.  It was an amazing sight.  All these women, dancing and smiling in sync.  Real women with curves.  Real women without coordination.  Real women with lines and color and left feet and off beats.  It was beautiful.  We looked like a flock of birds in rhythm.

And something amazing began to happen.  I began to feel lighter and beautiful, like the dance.  My feet felt happy.  My knees were excited for more.  And the women around me started yelping and clapping after each song.  The moves became more sensual and Bri began to use imaginative stories, “You step wide into the shower and let the water rinse down your body…”  and every women in the room got into the image.  Their hands moving from the top of their heads to the sides of their torso.  Eyes closed, the music throbbing in our veins.

The energy was something whole and pure, physical and sensual.  Our bodies weren’t in sync, but they were alive.  My skin was damp, my muscles were warm, and my bones flowed in directions it hadn’t moved in for a long time.  Through dance, I found myself smiling at everyone around me and finding smiles in return.  The physical became the spiritual.

“Decide to take action today.  Whatever it is – a fight you want to let go of, a bad decision, an idea you are sitting on – take action and live today.”

The dimmed lights, 25 women, undeniably infectious music, a positive but not overly cheesy dance instructor, and one quote: Decide to take action today.

At the end of class, after smirking at zumba class, and inward doubts about printed out quotes and dimmed lights, I turned out to be one of the women in line waiting to get a copy of the quote.

Dear Isaiah,

There are four major milestones that have occurred in the past two weeks.  On Tuesday, November 9, you kneeled in front of the one-step landing which leads to the staircase and, after several minutes of contemplation, climbed your first step on your own.  It took some contorting of your chubby limbs and some sliding around, but you did it.  Your Dad and I were there to watch you and clapped and cheered when you were finished.  You were so excited you bounced for a minute straight.  Knowing I was leaving for five days on a trip to El Salvador in the morning, I started crying.  Typical.

Sunday, the day I returned from El Salvador, the longest amount of time that I’ve ever been away from you, I asked your Dad if any major milestones happened (I was praying you’d wait to walk or say your first word when I was around), and he excitedly told me, “Today, Isaiah clapped for the first time.”  And sure enough, the next day when I led you down a path, luring you to clap after me, you patted your little hands together in not the loudest clap, but a bona fide smack of two palms meetings.

Yesterday, Saturday, after a whole day of watching you crawl and then straightening your legs like you were in a yoga downward dog position, you waited for an occupied moment.  Your Tita Carmen, Dad, and I were all laughing, talking about the wedding, and upcoming plans.  It was then you noticed a very shiny, a very unusual looking object in my hand: a beer bottle.  And it became so fascinating to you that you just had to touch it.  And you grabbed and grabbed and grabbed.  I was so concerned about you licking a drop of my cider beer and the clear detriment it would have on your development that I nearly missed an important question softly blinking in the back of my mind: How is he able to reach my bottle while I’m sitting on the couch?

YOU STOOD UP.

And it was then I freaked out and yelped at Nick and your Tita, “Do you see him?  Are you watching?  Can you believe it?”

And there it was, there you were, leaning up against the couch, standing for the first time like you truly, really, genuinely wanted something.  It was a beer bottle.

Finally, the last milestone, which was the most stunning of all progressions happened quite randomly and I’m glad there were witnesses because, otherwise, no one would have believed me.  Tuesday, I brought you into work and when we were getting ready to leave, with four co-workers waving goodbye, you extended your little arm and bopped it up and down and responded to my friend Marie with, “BAH BYE!”

Silence.  Complete and utter silence.  We were shocked.  We just witnessed your first word, and in my thrill didn’t really mind it wasn’t “mom” and to hear you make an association between your verbal ability and a physical motion was just out of this world.  Truly.

So, today, on your 11 month birthday, I can only marvel at your growth.  It feels like each passing day comes with endless riddles of guessing what might happen today, what might shock those around you, what might someone miss if they are not with you.  So, Isaiah, these days I am grateful to the heavens above that I am with you.  That I have a place in the world that allows me to work and watch you grown.  Be with you, hold you, scream for your Dad upstairs the seconds before you conquer your first step, widen my eyes at my co-workers after your first words, and nearly spill my beer all over your head in ecstacy when you stand, and clap like a fool when I am ridiculously proud of you for learning to put your hands together.  For every moment that I witness your little life building with strength and accomplishment, I say litanies of gratitude.

Eleven months doesn’t seem quite possible, but, then again, neither does that wondrous amount of goodness and love you have brought to our family.

Love,

Mama

Early this week, I returned to the United States to find More magazine running a feature on the new feminist faces and find the majority of them fair(er) skinned, dimploma-ed, English speaking, internet-friendly activists. I shake my head at the latest case of mainstream feminism’s narcissistic identity crisis, led or diagnosed primarily by US-centric feminists who love to throw the limelight on the academically inclined and computer savvy.

So in More’s latest round of THE US AMERICAN’S NEXT TOP FEMINIST, I read that nearly all of these feminists were being identified because of their web presence, or published works, or education/professional status, or defining leadership in a she’s-the-founder/dot org kind of way.  Not that the work of these women should be ignored,  but even Miriam Perez, one of the featured feminists, wrote that she was included in this list probably because she knows and is friends with another featured feminist. Which means, as long as we associate with certain types of “feminists,” our work will be acknowledged as well.  Or deemed important.  Or distributed throughout media.  This is More’s way of defining leadership?

And what exactly does this kind of profiling do?  Does it celebrate the accomplishments of women, everyday women, women who do not identify feminist but who dedicate their *lives* for the advancement of women outside internet, academic, and professional settings?  How and why has feminism become so pinky-up that the background for a feminist leaders photoshoot takes place in what resembles a vacated hotel lobby instead of the actual battlegrounds of gender injustice?  The trenches don’t look like that from my perspective.  If this is how feminism looks, I must be in the wrong movement.

Instead of media uplifting the grassroots efforts, the everyday actions of extraordinary women and women identified individuals, it relentlessly chooses to uplift the same and profile the same kinds of leadership within feminist identified communities.  And for a movement that supposedly is for the advancement of ALL women, we sure do spend an awful lot amount of time congratulating the same kinds of folks over and over again.  Perhaps it is not these fifteen women who need a magazine spread, but a feature redefining the meaning of feminist leadership in the context of our global society would be more helpful.

I work with make/shift magazine.  I assist with their profiling section and know first hand that it is Hard effing Work to find the visionaries and brave souls out there doing and BEING the work, and profiling them for the world to know about.  It’s a lot of research, a ton of time, and plenty of false leads.  But they’re out there and it’s about being dedicated to the organizations and people who are not in it for fame, money, press, or numbers. It’s about understanding that feminism is about shifting, not sameness.

So, here’s a handful of people who I think are doing pretty damn important work out in the world…

This is Roxanna. I met her last week in El Salvador as she worked as an interpreter and guide into the mountains of Chiltiupan.  She and I talked in both English and Spanish, swapped stories about our jobs, love lives, families, and perspectives.  With her smile and voice, she helped organize hundreds of women and children get photographed for the first time in their lives.  She offers me her perspective and advice on how to bring sandwiches and food to a starving pueblo in the mountains.   I didn’t ask her her degree.  I didn’t think it was necessary.  She has limited access to the computer and I highly doubt she is a blogger.

This woman didn’t give me her name.  She’s a coffee bean worker in the mountains of El Salvador.  For the back breaking work she is doing, to fill her one basket, she’ll receive $1.25 for one basket which will go toward her family and their livelihood.  Even in her work, she still made time to talk with women from the United States, welcome us to her land, and help us in our learning how to pick coffee beans.  I didn’t inquire about her education nor did I consider it important to ask if she was a blogger or social media buff.  She assisted us throughout the day, offering us worn seats and introducing us to her family.  Her smile could light up one side of a mountain.

This is Detroit based Adele Nieves (on the right) who is stroking the cheek of my son, Isaiah.  Adele is an amazing community organizer, activist, and world traveler.  Her journalism reflects her professional ethos of love-centered labor.  She spends her time traveling to conferences to document the global movement of all women, learning more about their traditions and culture so she is well-versed in the many tongues of feminisms.  She becomes a tia (aunt) to the children of those she loves, caring for them, and welcoming them to the world of hope and struggle.  From interviews to spoken word, from Africa to Atlanta, Adele connects with whomever is in her presence.

Jennifer Padilla, aka, Ate Pots [Ah-teh POTS] is a Filipina working on behalf of social injustices in the Philippines.  She works with grassroots organizers in the Philippines and believes in the awesome power of the arts to transform the political and social ills of society.  Her daughter, Gabby, is multilingual, and is often brought to rallies and marches, sessions and program with Ate Pots.  Her spouse supports this integration of children and activism.  Their entire family welcomes and supports US-activists who go the Philippines to learn more about the injustices of the government and their way of life.

This is Stacy Milbern on the left and Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the right.  Cripchick (Stacey Milbern) is “a powerchair-roaring, poetry-stringing, people power-dreaming disabled queer woman of color. After pouring the last five years of her life into organizing with the Disabled Young People’s Collective, she is currently taking a break from traditional organizing to write, make media and deepen relationships,”  according to Ms. Cripchick herself.  And Alexis Pauline Gumbs is busy “collecting and amplifying the social organizing herstories of black women, trans men, and gender queer visionaries who have been refusing the limits of heteronormativity and opening the world up by being themselves in the second half of the 20th century.”

Who’s on your list?

i keep using the word “recovery”

like i just went through something that caused trauma or pain, when in actuality, i went through something that made me feel more alive.

so, am i recovering from being alive?  going back to being less alive or…?

i am recovering from exhaustion, dehydration, fatigue, being “on” the whole time (when you’re photographing, you are unrelenting in finding the perfect angle and light), and translating english-spanish/spanish-english.

i’m tired.

so tired, i’m not bothering with capitalization.

the longest separation from my son – 5 days – and the next morning, when i got him out of his crib, he just smiled and stared at me, like he couldn’t really believe i was there.  and we sat together and talked.  i told him about el salvador and the people i met there.  he made noises and smiled.  he showed me his newest milestone: clapping.  i almost started crying.  (…the tears never stop…)

when he napped, i stared at the ceiling of my bedroom.  lying on my back, i examined how the walls met the ceiling perfectly.  no gaps, no holes for water, light, animals, or insects to come through.  no wind.  nothing except a soft green painted wall and a creme colored ceiling.  nick and i joke about our old windows being from the 1920s, but now i see an efficient window pane keeping all things that belong outside, outside.

i stared at my kitchen.  the white shelves nick built for me that hold my spices, lentiles, dried fruits, and pasta.  the abundance spoke to me in new ways.

chiltiupan has nothing in abundance.  and in the five days i spent walking the mountain roads, my leg muscles were hardened from the terrain.  here i only have smooth wooden steps that take me upstairs.  no dusty roads or lopsided cobblestone pathways.  here we have an old, worn lawn mower (probably in its last days) that can barely make the turn to go in another direction.  in chiltiupan, there are machetes to cut brush, apples, animals, and trees.

i tell people that when you travel to economically underdeveloped countries to not waste your time on guilt.  guilt is a self-indulgent emotion when left alone too long.  it leads to unproductive action geared toward what will relieve your guilt instead of utilizing your privilege and power to be used for something helpful, something that will relieve the violence, poverty, and injustice.

stop the guilt.  start believing.  start acting.  start thinking.  collaborate, be joyful, be useful, let yourself be transformed so your relationships are more than just words of love, but are action based foundations of love.

remove “feeling bad” for what you have and, instead, use what you’ve been given for good.  what good comes from “feeling bad?”

more action is done from joy and understanding than guilt and bad feelings.  they steer you toward charity, not justice.

it’s not enough to go to the poor corners of the world and feel peaceful because of their smiles.  it’s not enough to wonder how “they” survive and leave money in their hands.  it’s not enough to get on a plane and tell your friends that the people are wonderful.

what is enough?

it is a question only you can answer yourself.  it is a question between you and Whom/Whatever you pray to at night.

One thing I love about Ohioans is how we have just as bad of winters as Boston –  tons of snow;  chill factors that would freeze your bum off and grey skies that have folks making their own sun lamps for maintaining sanity levels – and yet, every year, Ohioans talk about how they can’t believe snow is on its way.  Like a barista surprised at the idea of a regular ordering her morning latte.

The only thing that surprises me about Ohio is how Ohioans are surprised by the first snowfall.  Other things I am not surprised at but surprised that other people are surprised by:

1) How OSU lost one game that it should have won.  “There’s always one,” Nick reminds me every pre-season.

2) How Kasich beat Strickland in a tight governor race. “There’s a reason why we’re called a swing state.”

3) How it was near 80 degrees a week and a half ago and tomorrow it will be snowing.  “It’s Ohio.  It snows in April.”

4) How the local news features animal pet stories as headliners. “Is this our NEWS?!” Nick always complains.

In other surprising news, Isaiah has jumped leaps and bounds in his development.  I should call him Curious George because DON’T YOU KNOW? EVERYTHING IS FASCINATING WHEN YOU SEE IT FOR THE FIRST TIME!  He can’t talk yet, but his eyes tell me everything.  “LOOK!   FLASHLIGHT!  OVER THERE – A PLANT!  MOM, DID YOU SEE THIS? A COUPON!”

He looks so genuinely surprised at every new detail life introduces him, too.  It kinda makes me feel like an old fart.  As if 31 years is too many times around the block already.  I try to be excited with him, but there isn’t much energy left in my bank when he holds up the 17th gold leaf of the day and marvels at the seemingly endless supply of acorns to try and stuff in his mouth when we’re outside raking leaves.

But Isaiah himself surprises me everyday with his big bigger biggest smile that keeps growing wider and wider.  You’d think I would have learned by now that he’s just a great, well-behaved kid, but everytime we’re in a new situation and he sits perfectly quiet on my lap, never interrupting, I am surprised by his respectful demeanor.  How can a 10 month old know to be so quiet during mass?  To not reach out and tug on trick-or-treaters?  To stop 1 ft before the fireplace?  To not touch the radiators or pull down the drapes?  How does he know to keep himself amused when I am on the phone instead of screaming into the mouthpiece?

I am surprised by Isaiah.  Infinitely and deeply surprised.

On a day road trip to and from Cincinnati in one day, I found myself alone in the car for a total of 7.5 hours.  Normally, I would dread the drive, particularly because I’m usually the snorer in the passenger seat, not behind the wheel.

But this road trip was different for some reason.  It was the first time in several months I’d been alone for a large chunk of the day, no baby, no spouse, not even a co-worker next to me. This incredibly odd cascade of aloneness swept over me.  AND I LOVED IT.

I’m not a coffee drinker but I was a bit weary of the possibility of dozing off on 71N, so I drank a cup of coffee, relishing the sweetness and rarity of the occasion.  I returned phone calls, some that have been back logged to July and I left chirpy voicemails and affectionate messages.  Another odd feeling washed over me: I was only thinking of what I needed to do for non-related people in my life.  I LOVED IT.

Calling Denver, I talked to old roommates from a decade ago who were reuniting for the weekend and were on their way to a concert, but stopped to squeal with laughter for 45 minutes rehashing memories of our time together in Washington state.  I left a voicemail mesasage for a former coworker from Boston who wanted advice about his love life.  My brother in Los Angeles and I swapped stories about favorite restaurants and recipes the other needed to try.  In New York, one of my friends was in love but overwhelmed with the new PhD program she had just begun.  My best friend in Hawaii is getting married and needed advice on venues for the reception.

And then, the last epiphany settled: Other people in my life with whom I have built sturdy and lasting relationships with need me.  They actually miss me.  They wonder where I am and what I am doing now that I have disappeared into the abyss of motherhood.  To reconnect, to feel needed for sound advice about things outside practicality, schedule, work, and childrearing felt, to use an overused word, amazing.

I remembered memories long before Nick and Isaiah, when I spent hours gabbing with friends, bonding with co-workers with no sense or fear of time or commitment.  When life was boundless and undemanding, you can do those kinds of things; spend all the time in the world with whomever and have no guilty.  You can go away for a weekend and not have a planner to tell you what you need to do when you return to get back on track.

I thought about all the places I’d been that led me to this day.  I felt grateful to have so many people to call back.

We all need to be needed.  And sometimes we need to be needed by more than just the same people in our daily lives to remind ourselves of how largely we are connected to others, how large our circle of impact is to our friends and peers.

To know you have been missed is a wonderful gift on a Saturday night road trip.