Kirstin Howard Sand sifts down, one grain at a time forming a small hill. When it grows high enough, a tiny avalanche begins. Let sand continue to sift down, and avalanches will occur irregularly, in no predictable order, until there is a tiny mountain range of sand.
For five years I went from job to job, wandering through the work force, attempting to find employment that would support and engage me. I was involved in the dance circuit. I had started tap dancing at age five but did not seriously commit to dance until I was nineteen. I struggled through the dance training due to my late start. But I realized dance was what I wanted, and desperately needed. In 1998 I discovered I was pregnant and that I needed to find a full-time job to support my son. Along with work and caring for my son, I attended dance classes at night. I became so involved in the dance world that I soon became a teacher for the Utica community and at a local dance studio in New Hartford, New York. This however was not enough. Where would education fit into this hectic struggle I called life?
One grain at a time, a pattern is formed one grain at a time, a pattern is destroyed, and there is no way to know which grain will build the tiny mountain higher, which grain will tilt the mountain into avalanche, whether the avalanche will be small or catastrophic, enormous or inconsequential.
I discovered The ACCESS Project through a member of the Utica community. I was told that this program was formed to help single mothers with low income to further their education. I applied and was accepted and remarkably this college had a dance program.
We are always dancing with chaos, even when we think we move too gracefully to disrupt anything in the careful order of our lives, even when we deny the choreography of passion, hoping to avoid earthquakes and avalanches, turbulence and elemental violence and pain. We are always dancing with chaos, for the grains sift down upon the landscape of our lives, one, then another, one, then another, one then another.
The ACCESS Project staff helped me to survive, academically, emotionally, as well as with family needs. My son and I struggled through tough times in order to survive. But today we are moving forward with new found purpose and with strength, dignity and clarity in the world.
I sang, but not to make order of the sea nor of the dawn, nor of my life. Not to make order at all. Only to sing, clear notes over sand. Only to walk, footsteps in sand. Only to live.
In 2004 I graduated from Hamilton College with a Bachelor’s degree in Dance. It has been a long haul but I did it. My son is six now and in first grade. He is as proud of me as I am of him. Amazing how a child copes with a mother being as busy as I have been and through rough times. I am grateful for finding The ACCESS Project; they have showed me, along with my family and friends, how to reason and prevail through tough and trying times. They have continued to show me the beauty in dreams and therefore I dance.
