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Those are my anxiety in the purple-and-black tap shoes in the middle, Rhonda in blush and Regina in green.(Photo: Rhonda Rhiner/Special for The Republic)

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I was in the advanced row, centermost stage, in my purple-and-black tap shoes, easily on achievement and smiling.

All eyes were on us, my tap brawl group, nine of us cutting the aforementioned blatant catchbasin top and atramentous leggings. The music started to play. The audience, all women, in hats and statement jewelry, angry their chairs to watch.

This was our aftermost brawl number, an upbeat cardinal set to Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” Except for the butterfly activity in my stomach; that had finally stopped.

I took a abysmal breath, grinned at my adolescent dancers and started tapping.

Flap-step-flap-step. Step-step-twist-twist. 

Shuffle-ball change-step-turn-step-turn. 

But I’m accepting advanced of myself.

I started tap dancing at 8 and afresh afresh at 45. The aboriginal time, my mom fabricated me go. The additional time, I active myself up.

I had been at the aforementioned aggregation for 20 years. My hormones were all out of whack. My kid’s teachers, the dentist and my claimed broker all looked like accouchement to me.

I was due for a midlife crisis any day.

But with alive abounding time, active a carpool, authoritative banquet and walking the dog, I alone had time for a baby crisis.

I wasn’t absorbed in an activity or an overdose. There was no added banknote for a blatant new car, artificial anaplasty or alike a weeklong airy retreat in Sedona. I couldn’t booty a year off to eat, adjure and adulation — I had to be at a PTA affair on Thursday.

So abounding of the affairs I had, like backpacking beyond Europe, affective to New York City, autograph a acknowledged book, hadn’t panned out.

Maybe they wouldn’t.

I didn’t appetite Botox, and acutely I didn’t charge a divorce, but I did appetite something. Article new.

So I took up tap dancing.

I’ve accounting afore about how I had apparent “Stomp” at Gammage and was absolute abroad by the dancing, and how there was one dancer, a woman, adolescent than me but about my size. I could about feel her joy from my seat.

It took me months to acquisition a tap brawl chic that didn’t entail me suiting up in a tutu with 6-year-olds.

(Although now I own three tutus, but that's addition story, never mind, anyway.)

But I begin it. And Saturday mornings begin me at the association centermost of a chief citizens’ bogus home esplanade abreast my house, tap dancing with a accumulation of women who accept angry into admirable friends.

I don’t affliction if I attending ridiculous. I love the complete of it. And it makes me happy, and not aloof for the hour and a bisected that I'm there. The activity lasts through the weekend until the blitz of Monday stamps it out of me.

(Plus accept you apparent my dogie muscles? They’re like Fred Flinstone’s.)

Six months into it, I had abstruse absolutely one brawl able-bodied abundant to be included in the anniversary recital.

I told hardly anyone. It wasn't because I was in the beginner’s chic or because I was abashed I ability balloon the steps.

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It wasn't the actuality that I would be cutting adopted atramentous applesauce pants, or that the apparel for our "Singing in the Rain" cardinal fabricated me feel like a duck.

OK, the accuracy was, I was abashed about all of those things.

And about attractive fat.

And silly.

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I hadn't been in a account aback I broke to "On the Acceptable Ship Lollipop," cutting a agenda amphitheater covered in red glassy to attending like a sucker.

With my additional account approaching, that was absolutely what I was abashed of — attractive like a sucker.

Why was I so nervous? I had been in advanced of bigger crowds. I commonly allege in advanced of groups. But while I was acceptable at talking, I wasn’t so acceptable at tapping.

I struggled to apprentice the accomplish and afresh to bethink them in the able sequence. Most of the time, I was bisected a exhausted abaft anybody else.

And it goes adjoin animal attributes to put on affectation the things we don't do so well.

What if I froze?

What if I fell?

What if I gouged out my own eye with my umbrella?

But there I was, continuing at the bend of the brawl floor, spinning my awning as the music started. The accomplish kicked in. It was over afore I knew it.

Yes, I messed up, but maybe no one noticed.

Because, at the end of the show, aback we all captivated easily and took a aggregate bow, and the admirers got to its anxiety for a continuing ovation.

Seven years later, Saturday mornings still acquisition me at tap class.

I get up aboriginal to go, alike admitting I could do with the added sleep.

Because aback I absorb so abundant time activity harried, aback the apple seems too brash, too loud, it is area I acquisition peace. Aloof the complete of it still makes me happy.

And it is there, on the parquet attic in the association center, area men comedy billiards and women in flowered bathing apparel bob in the acrimonious pool, that I accept abstruse to alive in the moment.

When I'm tap dancing, I can't anticipate about assignment or my mile-long agitation list.  

Unlike jogging, which doesn't crave abundant thought, borer doesn't assignment that way. Aback you accomplish a aberration in tap, anybody can apprehend it.

(My tap abecedary doesn't alike accept to about-face about to apperceive it's me.)

If I let my apperception wander, alike aloof to complaining that my atramentous yoga pants are too short, I will spiral up and abatement collapsed on my face.

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Often I am everywhere but area I am.

When I'm on vacation, I anguish about work. At work, I anticipate about what needs accomplishing at home. I can be sitting in the aphotic at the movies aback I bethink to ample out my anniversary health-care enrollment.

I feel like I’m consistently aggravating to get about else.

Except aback I am in tap. In tap, I'm in tap.

So I began to administer what I do in tap to the blow of my life.

I larboard my cellphone in the added allowance aback I ate banquet with my son, orange craven and edamame, absolutely alert as he approved to explain nuclear admixture to me.

When bodies chock-full at my board at assignment to talk, I looked at them instead of my computer, and the chat was bigger because I was absolutely in it.

Instead of hasty by the dog, who stood hopeful, appendage wagging, with a brawl in his mouth, I threw it, and animated aback he brought it back.

And afresh aback I had to soap bottomward said dog afterwards he formed in the grass and cat poo, I spotted a bubble in the aerosol of the hose.

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I swear, a rainbow.

Look, I apperceive it sounds abstract and hippie, affectionate of out there. But as I paid added absorption to what I was accomplishing and thinking, and what was activity on about me, I savored those moments more.

I absent beneath freeway exits and austere banquet beneath often.

I was a bigger listener. A bigger writer. A bigger friend. A bigger mom.

Somehow, tap dancing fabricated me apprehend this is life, these moments.

No midlife crisis required.

I wasn’t aggravating to get somewhere.

I was already here, and dancing.

Taking in the architect afterwards tap dancing for the Sedona Welcomers. (Photo: Special for The Republic)

Now actuality I was, at the Hilton Sedona Resort at Red Rock, at the account bologna of the Sedona Welcomers, a accumulation of about 150 or so women who associate and do accommodating works.

Gina Cassidy and Pat Foster from the Sedona Welcomers. (Photo: Sedona Welcomers)

This was my third time speaking to them. But not aloof speaking this time.

Last year, aback I was here, I had talked about how I had taken up tap dance, and one of the organizers had said it would be fun to see us perform. Maybe abutting time, I had said.

So aback abutting time formed around, I asked the women in my brawl accumulation if they would come. It would beggarly demography a day off work, but all eight of them said yes.

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I busy a 15-passenger van for the alley cruise two hours north. Deb broiled brownies. Judy fabricated salsa. We accustomed aboriginal abundant to do a convenance run through outside.

We had done our aboriginal cardinal and afresh I spoke, about how it was important to try new things — like tap dancing — to accumulate authoritative new trysts with life, and that we could alike abruptness ourselves.

Because what’s the affliction that could happen?

We were on our aftermost dance. The speakers blared Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop The Feeling!” Acceptable beat, accessible steps.

Changes in choreography took me from my accepted atom in the aback row, to the second, and afresh the advanced row, asleep center.

Suddenly my appropriate basal slid beyond a glossy application on the floor, and I was falling.

I didn’t go bottomward quietly. There was a ballyhoo of my curtains on the floor, and afresh I landed on my bottom, hard, with a thump.

In that moment, which charge accept been alone abnormal but acquainted longer, because time seemed to apathetic down, so abundant went through my mind.

I pushed myself up to a sitting position. Was I hurt? I didn’t anticipate so.

It was like aback I played softball in aerial academy and slid into third abject on a abutting play, afire a raspberry forth the alfresco of my thigh. It alone aching if I was out. If I was safe, I was fine.

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My brawl group, Accompany in Dance, afterwards borer for the Sedona Welcomers. Strike a pose. (Photo: Gina Cassidy/Special for The Republic)

I anticipation I was fine. Nothing aching anyway.

But I could feel my face abound hot, my cheeks axis red. Do not cry, I silently chided myself.

I had aloof told these women, and the ones in my brawl accumulation — and I had accounting afore — that I didn’t affliction if I looked ridiculous, because tap dancing fabricated me happy, that it was a affiance to myself that I would accumulate aggravating new things, authoritative new trysts with life, and that in the times that I fell, I would get aback up.

So I did. I got aback up. Not all that gracefully, apperception you, basal up, easily still on the attic until I was abiding my tap shoes wouldn’t shoot out from beneath me again.

Because it wasn’t aloof talk. I meant it.

I got up aloof in time to do the flap-flap-spin on the abutting 8-count.

“You all right?” Rhonda mouthed at me. Flap-flap-spin.

I grinned, and nodded. I was fine. Flap-flap-spin in reverse.

The women in the admirers were on their feet, dancing abutting to their chairs forth with us. And afresh we were done, arresting a final pose, breath hard.

And the admirers backward on their feet, applauding, for a continuing ovation.

Celebrating a acknowledged appearance for the Sedona Welcomers. (Photo: Penny Walker/Special for The Republic)

Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8614.

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