Nana’s advice

It’s been 4 months since I had my shit-fit and walked away from belly dance out of complete frustration and anger. At that point, I was at the end of my rope with all of this Covid bullshit affecting my love of dancing and teaching. 

I took myself out until I can go back to teaching and dancing without restrictions. I would rather not dance than be dicked around with…you can dance today, then the next day you can’t. 

I just passed my four-month mark of, “Operation get back into shape.” It started off as a way to blow off steam and be as angry as I wanted in the gym. I listened to angry music and went back to serious weight lifting. No diet, no pressure, no weighting myself, just get in there and get my strength back. I’m going to come out of this a stronger person.

I am even more determined to keep at it and make this a lifestyle choice like it was for so many years of my life. I do have to admit there are many days I have to talk myself into working out and sticking with it. That’s when I thought of what my Nana would tell me when I was a little girl. 

Nana would say that everyone has two little angels on their shoulders. On the right side you had the good angel, and on the left side was the bad angel. 

She said that whenever I was about to decide to something or not do something I needed to listen to the angels on my shoulders and make the right choice.

For example, when I was a kid if I wanted to eat a bunch of candy before dinner…The bad angel said, “Go ahead kid you deserve it.” The good angel said, “Your parents will be mad if you don’t finish your dinner.” The bad adds, “Hey shut up, it’s her favorite kind of candy.” The good one said, “Don’t listen you will get a bellyache.” Ok, I won’t eat the candy. 

If only I would have listened to Nana’s advice when I was a teenager or as an adult. I forgot all about the good and bad angels. They would have saved me a lot of heartache and trouble over the years. 

I spent a lot of time with both of my grandmothers when I was young. I loved both of them and looked forward to visiting them. They were both widowed, but other than that they were so different from one another. I had different relationships with each of them. In one relationship I was the nurturer,  in the other one I was nurtured. 

Nana was a lot older than my other grandmother that I called Mema. Nana lost her eyesight from cataracts when I was around 7 or 8. I became her helper. I would get dropped off at her apartment on a Saturday mornings after my dance classes.

I would help Nana with her laundry. I loved wheeling her laundry cart down the long hallway and onto the elevator. I liked loading the laundry into the washer and throwing in some detergent. Nana had a bunch of quarters in her housecoat pocket. She would count out how many I needed to put into the machine.

While the laundry was washing we would sit in the lobby of the senior citizen apartment building. I knew everyone and they would ask me to show them what I learned in dance that morning. I loved performing for them. Nothing has changed in that department.

When the washer was done, we would go and do the same thing with the dryer. Later nana folded her things. She folded some and rolled up some. Since she couldn’t see, that was how she could tell what was what.

Later in the day, I would walk Nana around the corner to a little store. She had one of those old fashion grocery wheely things. I remember that the store always had a bad smell. We would get the same thing almost every week. Milk, eggs, bread, and bananas. Thank goodness I never had to ask anyone for help, because no one spoke English. This was the Spanish section of her neighborhood. 

As we would walk back to her apartment, and rounded the corner, there a gospel church. We could hear the choir rehearsing for the next day. Nana and I sat on a bench on the apartment grounds and listened to them sing. Church hymns are church hymns so Nana would sing along. I liked these hymns so much better than the ones we sang in our Catholic Church. They were jazzy, fun, and full of life. I never got to go into that church, but I could imagine what it looked like and who was singing. 

On our way back into the building, Nana would hand me her keys and I could get her mail. I could reach her mailbox on my tippy toes. I did my best to read her mail to her. She was very organized since she was blind so she would tell me back in her apartment what basket got the mail and what one got the bills. My absolute favorite thing to do of all was to take her little brown bag of trash to the incinerator. It had a handle like a mailbox at the post office. As I dropped the bag down the shoot I would say to the bag of trash, “Goodbye cruel world.” 😂

Nana managed very well for a long time living alone and being blind. She could cook, do dishes, and clean. I started to notice when I came that her cleaning wasn’t as good anymore, so without her knowing I would clean what she missed.  

The idea of the good and bad angels represents your conscience and temptation. Decisions we have to make every day,  even if we don’t realize we are doing it. That was what Nana was preparing me for in her way.

Yesterday I really didn’t want to work out. I mean, I really didn’t want to. “Don’t work out today, you deserve a day to relax,” said the bad angel. “Don’t listen to him, you get out there, you will be glad you did,” the good one whispered. I listened to the good one and felt great after my workout. 

Nana passed away in 1993, but I feel her around me from time to time. Yesterday, she joined me on my workout journey, and it was a Saturday, our day we used to spent together.