A few nights ago, I came across a documentary on PBS, "Capturing Grace," about a group of Parkinson's Disease patients who learn to dance through a partnership between the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Brooklyn Parkinsons Group.
It's so moving watching the students--all older, all suffering Parkinson's symptoms--become dancers, transcending the limits of their bodies. They seem to take flight.
The director, Dave Iverson, a reporter for NPR, was diagnosed with Parkinson's eight years ago.
"This is a film about rediscovery, the rediscovery of a lighter step and the sweetness of motion. And it's a story about a remarkable community of dancers--some professional, some not--but all coming together to move in space...and in doing so, rediscovering grace. And it is in that rediscovery that each becomes whole," he says.
You can watch the trailer here.
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Watching this documentary, I was reminded of a quote that my friend and next door neighbor, Laura, posted on Facebook a few days earlier, from the poet David Whyte.
"The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door." [my italics]
To be re-read whenever I feel aging weighing on me. And I may buy the DVD of "Capturing Grace." for the same reason.
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Yesterday at the Food Pantry, there was a flurry of clients just before closing time at 4 pm. The very last client in the door was a tall, very thin African American lady in her eighties. She'd paid a taxi to get her there in a hurry. I checked her in, and then she darted out to pay the cab driver and came back to shop.
I was taken with her right away. Her first name was "Sister," and she had a short gray braid that hung below the rim of her hat at the back. She took a long time pondering what she wanted and ended up with a bulging plastic bag of produce and a small roller bag of other food.
"How're you getting home?" I asked her.
"I'll try to get a bus," she said.
I offered to drive her.
Off we went to her apartment in downtown Berkeley. On the way she told me she plays the piano at the North Berkeley Senior Center and that she'd played at the World's Fair on Treasure Island in 1939-1940. She was gracious beyond measure, quietly intelligent and reflective.
"I like being around your joyousness," she said at one point.
What--the curmudgeonette joyous?
"I had a bad morning," I told her. "I watched Obama sing "Amazing Grace" on YouTube at that funeral. Very sad."
"I watched that on CNN," she said. She sighed. "Those Republicans go after him."
When we got to her apartment building, I drove around the block so I'd could park right at the door and help her carry her food.
"You're a doll and a sweetheart, and I thank you a thousand million times," she said when I left her at the elevator.
How did I happen to run into this remarkable lady?
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