Cheryl Forrest was just four years old when she was photographed sitting on the Plymouth Belvedere, the soon-to-be-buried time capsule, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1957. This memoir is a coming of age story, late in life, when she found the courage to travel abroad to study French. It is also a tale of tutus, for her story is inextricably linked with that of the ballet company with which she danced.

Her life for so long had been limited by to-do lists and everyday responsibilities. Now in her sixties, Cheryl found that she was being pulled to a different sort of life—a life of learning, adventure, deep friendships, and joy. She spent a summer in Quebec and another in the South of France, and absorbed the sights, sounds, colors, and landscapes of her locales. She not only found a love of the language and its speakers, but also made unexpected friendships, overcame lifelong anxieties, and rekindled her first love, that of classical ballet.