Susan Senator

I am so excited because I am going to write about the Baby Bellies class — the ups and the downs — alongside how Benj did “Kids as Teachers” one day in his fourth grade class. Sort of compare my experience as a hapless BD teacher of little Jewels, Ben’s experience, and Ben’s teacher’s vast experience as a decades-long veteran from Brookline Public Schools.

Oy, Baby Bellies. They are so sweet, so scattered. There, like nowhere else, I have learned a bit about not taking myself too seriously, a great lesson for me. As two of them split off from the group and just fooled around on the gym mats wearing their trays on their heads, I felt the dusty, dry mouthful of frustration today, but I stood there, regrouped, and got over it.

I had that same feeling in my class yesterday as I tried to master a hip lift traveling step with alternating sexy hands. It looked fantastic when Najmat did it, but on me, it’s like I have a headache or I’m saluting or something. Lisa wanted us to do it together in the Middle East last night, and I tried, but I was pretty embarrassed. I’m much better with things on my head, I guess.

I feel I have to apologize about writing so much about bellydance, it can’t possibly interest that many people, but it is in some ways my guilty pleasure. There is a part of me that feels I shouldn’t be doing it, I shouldn’t be enjoying myself so much while people in the world are starving, that kind of thing. I feel like why doesn’t every woman know about this and do it? Doesn’t everyone want to feel good? But I know that is simplistic. Everyone finds their own ways of feeling good — hopefully.

One of the main ideas I want you to get out of reading this blog is that life is for us. We are here, I believe, due to randomness but also due to Someone’s sufferance. I am not a religious freak (I am not all that religious) but I do feel some kind of presence sometimes that is kind of holding me up, loving me, helping me. Call it what you will.

So there is something about movement in a certain way that raises my endorphins and my adrenaline, all those nice scientific words, and reaches my mouth and makes me smile. Or maybe it is the connection between my eyes and Ned’s or Nat’s (my main audience). They are watching me with interest, and every now and then Ned let’s go a “wow!” or “Very sinuous.” Ned appears to be a small complimenter, until suddenly he lets loose with something like, “You are the deluxe model woman,” or calls me “Face!”

I think that as long as you can keep surprising each other and taking one another’s breath away every now and then, you will continue to have a good marriage. We stumble upon things that startle one another into taking another look. Like pretending we just met, at a party, like the other night. Or the poems he has written me over the years. Or when I make him something with bacon or coconut in it.

I think the dancing takes my own breath away.