The White Swan

The soft girl drifted away from the ballet and felt the air fall around her like silk. It was a wonderful twenty-four hours, one of the rare occasions that my husband and I leave our children in the capable hands of adults other than us, and go on an adventure. How lovely it was to feel ourselves again.

I could tell you about the day, but the day itself was unremarkable. What was remarkable was the silk air, though, and so I’ll tell you about that part because it was all the lovely things.

The soft girl, for those of you who are wondering, is me— the deeper version of me that holds my intuition, my connection to nature, and most importantly…my ability to feel life and love at a level I’ve never known before. The soft girl is the part of me I choose.

Last night we went to see the dark version of the ballet Swan Lake, where the White Swan meets her Black Swan rival, and all sorts of horrible shenanigans ensue. I smiled as it occurred to me: the White Swan feels so much like the soft girl. I cried a little, too, as I watched—for all the grace, all the joy, all love she brought to the stage.

But as I watched the darkness ooze from the black swan as she danced, her shoulders undulating with sexuality and sass…I realised that she lives within me, too. I wondered about the dark swan that lives inside of all of us, the one who does not have permission to exist in polite and proper society. I thought of that repression of ‘darkness’ within, and what it means to be human and functioning within certain limits, and somehow the ballet became a little deeper and more wonderful than it already was.

For a moment, last night, I was a little girl again, at the ballet for the very first time and feeling every bit the elegant lady I’d always dreamed I might be one day. I was a woman with silk air floating about her. And I really do think I could use a bit more of that sort of wonderful in my life.