First position

My parents put me in dance classes when I was little. I donned the black leotard and the pink tights and went to classes twice a week during the school year and then four days a week over the blistering summer.

I was a slouchy kid who liked to dance. I slouched in general but more so when I didn't feel safe. It made me feel closer to the ground, more solid, more invisible with my neck pressed out and low like a turtle. My mother made fun of me puzzled whenever I did this.

One day while in ballet class doing exercises at the bar the instructor, DD walked up to me. She tilted my chin up and pushed my shoulders back, straightening my spine. "There. You are a queen," she said.

In that moment, the world looked totally different and I felt different in it.

My parents told me later how pleased they were at how ballet lessons improved my posture. And they loved the fancy bow I was taught at the end of class.

I disliked DD when I was little because she was such a strict demanding teacher. Looking back there is so much more.

Socially, she was a different creature entirely: marvelous, glamorous, and pretentious, speaking in theatrical tones while making grand gestures calling everyone darling. My father thought she was flakey to the max. My mother considered her a good friend.

She lived in a house by the lake with several interior greek columns, a gas fireplace and a cat named Zephyr. She was one of the few women at that time I knew who was divorced. She had three grown children. She was one of the few women I knew at that time who had had plastic surgery. She looked younger everytime I saw her over the years.

She ran the studio and made a very decent living at it. Every year she put together a dance recital at the local university's big auditorium. We giggled in our costumes backstage watching the older girls dance in toe shoes before it was our turn to take the stage.

She insisted that the local police deputize her so she could carry a gun in her handbag. Her reasoning for doing this was that her studio was on the outskirts of town surrounded by open fields and gravel pits. She carried a weapon to protect her classes of little girls. No one was going to hurt them on her watch. A queen protects her people.

Years at desks and lab benches have adversely affected my posture. When I straighten up I cannot help but hear DD say to me "You are a queen."

Which is laughable, really. I am far from regal. I rule over nothing but a laptop and mountains of dirty laundry. But sometimes I wonder if DD was trying to convey something besides good posture.