4.
I, Too, Can DanceI was in love with the way the dainty pink mouse glided across the stage, her tutu twirling as she pirouetted and her rose-colored bow following the motion of her outstretched arms with every grand jeté.
I had always dreamed I would dance, and Angelina Ballerina made it seem so easy. There was something so freeing about the way she wove her body into the delicate threads of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s song each time she performed an arabesque. I longed for my whole being to melt into the magical melodies of music; I longed to enchant the world with my own stories; and I longed for the smile that glimmered on every dancer’s face.
At recess, my friends and I would improvise dances. But while they seemed well on their way to achieving ballerina status, my figure eights were more like zeroes and every attempt at spinning around left me feeling dizzy. Sometimes, I even ran over my friends’ toes. How could I share my stories with others if I managed to injure them with my wheelchair before the story even began?
I then tried piano, but my fingers stumbled across the keys in an uncoordinated staccato tap dance of sorts. I tried art, but the clumsiness of my brush left the canvas a colorful mess. I tried the recorder, but had Angelina existed in real life, my rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” would have frozen her in midair, with flute-like screeches tumbling through the air before ending in an awkward split and shattering the gossamer world the Sugar Plum Fairy had worked so hard to build.
For as long as I could remember, I’d also been fascinated by words, but I’d never explored writing until one day in fourth grade, the school librarian announced a poetry contest. That night, as I tried to sleep, ideas scampered through my head like Nutcracker mice awakening a sleeping Clara to a mystical new world. By morning, I had choreographed the mice to tell a winning story in verse about all the marvelous outer space factoids I knew.
Now, my pencil pirouettes perfect O’s on paper amidst sagas of doting mothers and evanescent lovers. The tip of my pen stipples the lines of my notebook with the tale of a father’s grief, like a ballerina tiptoeing en pointe; as the man finds solace in nature, the ink flows gracefully, and for a moment, it leaps off the page, as if reaching out to the heavens to embrace his daughter’s soul. Late at night, my fingers tap dance across the keys of my laptop, tap tap tapping an article about the latest breakthrough in cancer research—maybe LDCT scans or aneuploidy-targeted therapy could have saved the daughter’s life; a Spanish poem about the beauty of unspoken moments; and the story of a girl in a wheelchair who learned how to dance.
As the world sleeps, I lose myself in the cathartic cadences of fresh ink, bursting with stories to be told and melting into parched paper. I cobble together phrases until they spring off my tongue, as if the Sugar Plum Fairy herself has transformed the staccato rumblings of my brain into something legato and sweet. I weave my heart, my soul, my very being into my words as I read them out loud, until they become almost like a chant. With every rehearsal, I search for the perfect finale to complete my creation. When I finally find it, eyes dry with midnight-induced euphoria, I remember that night so many years ago when I discovered the magic of writing, and smile.
I may not dance across the stage like Angelina Ballerina, but I can dance across the page.
I, too, can dance.
While I can’t run, I can swim and play water polo, and I can walk the campus giving Admissions tours. My family might not look like everyone else’s, but I can embrace those differences and write articles for the school newspaper or give a talk at “School Meeting,” sharing my family and my journey. Some of my closest friendships at Deerfield have grown from a willingness on both sides to embrace difference.
On one of the first days of 9th grade, I sat down to write a “Deerfield Bucket List”—a list of experiences that I wanted to have during my four years in high school, including taking a Deerfield international trip and making the Varsity swim team. That list included thirteen items, and I’m eleven-thirteenths of the way there, not because I have the right bra, but because I’ve embraced the very thing that my grandmother was afraid of. Bra shopping is still shrouded in mystery for me, but I know that I am where I should be, I’m doing work that matters to me, and fitting in rarely crosses my mind.
点评：
这篇文书，Sarika巧妙地描述了她想像虚构角色安吉丽娜芭蕾舞者那样跳舞，到通过写作找到深刻的满足感和表达自己的方式。
文章开头详细描述了Sarika早期对舞蹈的迷恋，这种迷恋是由她在电视上看到的动画表演激发的。
然而，我们了解到，她第一次尝试模仿这些舞蹈动作时，由于身体限制而受到阻碍，这使她年轻的目标变得复杂和受挫。
尽管困难重重，Sarika的故事仍然充满着坚韧和独 创性。她在绘画和钢琴等其他艺术媒介上的经历也遵循着类似的模式：最初充满热情，随后意识到自己的身体局限性。
然而，这些努力被视为垫脚石，每一个都增强了她的动力，引导她走向一个她真正能够取得成功的领域。
当Sarika发现热爱写作时，她的故事发生了戏剧性的转折。这一认识不仅是一种安慰，也是对自己声音的一次胜利发现。
写作就像她的舞池，文字使她能够优雅地移动，用舞台表演者所展现的优雅和流畅讲述故事和表达概念。
Sarika用与舞蹈相关的意象来描述她的写作过程，比如她的铅笔“旋转”和她的叙述“跃然纸上”，有效地将舞蹈和写作进行了比较。
Sarika的深刻反思和成熟的认识，即艺术表达可以有多种形式，使她的文章如此感人。她传达了一个强烈的信息，即接受一个人的能力，并探索艺术表达的多种途径。
在文书结尾，Sarika已经接受了自己的命运，甚至开始喜欢它。她在深夜有节奏地敲击键盘中找到了快乐，创作的故事有着经过精心编排的舞蹈般的优雅和复杂性。
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