The other day someone mentioned that choreography is nearly impossible to 

describe on paper. The laboriousness of articulating the simultaneous movements of four limbs, two hips, a chin, two elbows, and a neck which will change position four times in the next second quickly snowballs into too much information. A dance that lasts five minutes would take four days simply to read about much less learn. 

Another friend concurred. 

"Getting my degree in phys ed I had to write the sequence of muscles engaged in serving a volleyball. It was exhausting." This is a person for whom actually performing the serve comes easily. 

I subscribe to a bunch of lists that try to transcribe the motion of marriage.

"Ten ways to improve your relationship!"

"Five things happily married couples never do!"

I read many of them. Sometimes they translate into how I behave. Other times habit trumps head. 

Another strategy for learning how to dance is to watch someone doing it. Leave words out of it, as your eyes soak up the beauty of the ballet. 

If learning to walk depended on an ability to read about it first, mobility would be delayed by six years. But fortunately for mothers whose toddlers weigh twenty five pounds, kids can learn to defy gravity without written instructions. 

Today I will go out for lunch with a couple whose marriage is young. When I invited them they admitted to "hanging on by a thread." I am not tempted to bring them any reading material, though I have a bookshelf full of it. My prayer is that being in the presence of a couple whose thread has expanded to the size of a rope, might add to their ability to hang on.