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Barber.’” Her voice wavers only a little. “‘Every Tuesday through Saturday, one could find…A very patient barber, a one of a kind.’”
    Grandpa and Grandma Chenoweth’s church is one of the first places I performed, when I was seven or eight years old. I marched up to the front, fully prepared to belt out my favorite Evie Tornquist song, “I’m Only Four Foot Eleven, but I’m Going to Heaven, and It Makes Me Feel Ten Feet Tall.” But I was still a long way from my full height of four feet eleven inches (as the song prophesied), so when I got up to the podium, I disappeared completely behind it. I peeked around, stepped to the side, got a big laugh, and proceeded to blow the doors off the place. Evie would have been proud. Grandpa practically burst his buttons.
    But singing was not my first grand passion. When I was four, I saw a ballet on PBS and told my mom, “I want to do that.” It seemed like an odd but basically healthy pastime, so Mom inquired around and came up with the Runyon School of Ballet, which wasn’t far from our house. I vaguely remember my first recital. I was a tulip. I had to pee. One of the other tulips did pee. I immediately realized that this was not a good choice. (Moral of that story: far less embarrassing to learn from the mistakes of others. Feel free to apply this in your own life as needed.)
    By the time I was in second grade, I was eating, sleeping, and breathing ballet. I adored my ballet teacher, Miss Jane. She was as strict as a wooden yardstick, with posture to match. She took ballet very, very seriously, and so did I. Not all the girls did. A lot of girls skipped class occasionally, traded Skittles in the corner, complained about the heat, while my friend Sally and I hung on Miss Jane’s everyword. In addition to the technical steps and forms of dance, she talked about giving oneself to the emotion of the music to create a character. Miss Jane encouraged me to audition for the Tulsa Ballet production of The Nutcracker, and I did, but I was fully prepared to be told I was too little. “Too little” was something I heard a lot. I didn’t want to be taller just for the sake of being the same as everyone else, I was just tired of looking at butts all the time. Sometimes it seemed as if life in general had a MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE sign posted, and I never quite measured up. I was thrilled to flinders when Mom showed me the cast letter listing my name in the “Bunnies” column.
    During one performance, I saw a bit of greenery—a piece of garland or something from the set dressing—lying in the middle of the floor just before the company dancers were to make their entrance. All Miss Jane’s warnings about stray bobby pins and ribbons on the classroom floor sprang into my mind. Think “Someone could put an eye out!” only with broken ankles and subluxated joints. I knew I had to save them. But wait! I couldn’t break character. What would a bunny do? I thought. And not just any bunny. A Tchaikovsky bunny. A Victorian Tchaikovsky bunny. On Christmas Eve. With Stanislavsky devotion to my role, I hopped across the stage, took the stray greenery in my mouth, deposited it safely off to the side, and hopped back to my place. After the show, our director, Moscelyne Larkin—an Oklahoma dance legend and veteran of the original Ballets Russes—came backstage and called out over the noise and postshow bustle, “Where’s my clever bunny?”
    Fearing she wouldn’t see me in the forest of long legs, I jumped and waved.
    “Me! It was me!”
    “Ah! Brava!” she said, and I felt six inches taller than however tall you have to be to ride.
    As I got older, I worked hard to perfect my ballerina form and my ballerina body. I focused a lot of attention on my turnout, careful todo everything from riding my bike to climbing the stairs in a way that encouraged the long, lean muscles of a dancer, instead of the tough stems of an athlete. I watched Great Performances on PBS anytime