C’Mon Let’s Move!
Our house came with a bonus room: a glass box bolted onto the side of the kitchen, installed sometime in the '80s or '90s by someone who dreamed of starting seedlings indoors. One problem: no vents. So it's not really a greenhouse. It's a solar oven with delusions of grandeur.
None of that stopped me from falling in love with it. One look at the glass and the light and I thought: man-cave. Somewhere to train existing weird hobbies. Somewhere to learn new weird hobbies.
Then a third kid showed up. This was before the wisdom from kids one and two had even finished downloading, somewhere between my third unfinished gratitude journal and my second abandoned meditation app streak. Life went full throttle: 30-plus patients a day, 350-plus surgeries a year, call every fourth night, weekend, and holiday. Jenn, meanwhile, was doing the real heavy lifting, in the grand tradition of moms everywhere who somehow keep three kids alive while their husband "finds himself" in a glass box.
Two years vanished. Cracking the door open again, I found: a snowdrift of wood shavings from a forgotten wood whittling phase, a cooler still packed with rocks from our brief stint as snapping turtle landlords, and a comal the size of a manhole cover from one legendary hot-pot night.
Clearing it out felt like more than tidying a shed. It doubled as a strange kind of exit interview. I chose to become a surgeon back in 2011, which means I've spent the last 15 years training, working, and teaching in hospital operating rooms. The final eight of those years have been the most fulfilling and meaningful yet, as a urologist in Lowell. August 1 marks my first day of unemployment, the actual end of all that. Somehow, clearing out that little glass box turned into an honest inventory of everything else that had quietly gone dormant right alongside it.
One of those parts is dance. Starting in 2003, I hosted dance practices continuously for 15 years, wherever I could find a flat surface and an outlet (or eight D-batteries for my 1999 Aiwa ghettoblaster): my parents' driveway, a friend's basement, the high school lobby, the Chinese school gym, a stretch of sidewalk, a park, an empty classroom after hours, a studio on the rare occasion I could afford one. Acton, then Boston through college and med school, then New York City as a surgical resident: the address kept changing, the practice didn't. Until, eventually, it did.
When Jenn and I moved back to the suburbs we grew up in, life looked different. We were caring for my father-in-law, raising our son, and starting a career. Hosting community rapdancefights quietly slid down the priority list.
Every other Wednesday evening, our house fills up for the family group we host through our local church: friends, snackies, the good kind of chaos. Starting this month, I'm claiming the alternating Wednesday, same 7pm slot, for something new (old?): a dance practice! This week, I brushed off those old sneakers and tried em out in the glass shed, blasting music until my reflexes remembered things my brain forgot, doing the robot like my life depends on it! Next time, we'll set up the garage, the driveway, or the porch, wherever feels right that evening. I'm looking forward to teaching and sharing this movement practice with anybody who finds themselves nodding their head to music and feels instantly self-conscious!
Consider this the first post in a small, semi-public journal of that journey: a greenhouse getting a second life, a career chapter closing, and an old joy finding its way back into a new season. Dance footage and more of this in-between story to come.
Got a question, comment, song, link, dance move, or terrible idea for me to attempt?
Drop it in the Glass Box Mailbox: [Google Form link]
