My Gratitude List  (October 28, 2013)

Thanks to Laurel at Alphabet Salad for originating the idea of the Gratitude List and creating a link-up! Visit her and join in, sharing what you're grateful for at this moment in time.

My list today:

● The bright gold foliage outside my window, with the sun shining through it

● The Red Sox in the World Series

● Being nearly finished with my huge project—and having another one waiting for me

● Having the week’s food shopping done and menus planned for the week

● Living in a city and a neighborhood where it’s easy to walk so many places

● My dog sleeping on the bed down the hall

● The “undo” key in Word; I’d be lost without it!

● And always: my wonderful husband, the best part of my life!

 

I am inspired again this weekend to post 33 words for Trifecta. The challenge this time:

"Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, wrote, “It's like the smarter you are, the more things can scare you.”  We are looking for a 33-word explanation of what scares you (or your character)."

 

 

 

The Long, Slow Amnesia

 My mother’s puzzled frightened eyes, searching for sense.

“Are you my sister or my daughter?” she asks me.

No terror can match hers, but mine is right there beside it, holding its hand.

 

 

 

 

A Sixty-Plus Takes Up Belly Dancing

 

There are a few things you need to know about me. The first thing is that I am a serious klutz. I get bruises everywhere from bumping into things. Objects hide when they see me coming. My balance is tentative at best, precarious at worst, even when I’m only walking in a (semi)straight line. Last year I tripped over my dog and woke up in an ambulance with a concussion. This year I tripped on uneven concrete while running and ended up splayed on the sidewalk.

The second thing is that in my twenties, just after college, I took a modern dance class. I came down from a hop the wrong way and broke a bone in my foot; I was on crutches for a month.

The third thing is that I turned sixty-three years old last month. I’m not beautiful, not slender, not (see above) graceful. Nor athletic. I’m not Little Egypt (anyone remember her?) or Shakira.

 

Little EgyptShakira

 

 

 

With all this history, then, why would I sign up for a belly dancing class?

That was the question I kept asking myself for months, after an article in our local paper stirred up my latent dreams of myself as sylph-like and sensuous. Belly dancing had never been on my bucket list; in fact, the thought itself would have made me embarrassed and feel ridiculous in view of my aforementioned deficits.

But this article called it wonderful exercise “for all ages.” That got my attention. Then there were photos of a couple of local teachers and classes waving their arms, scarves (scarves!) floating from hands and tied around waists, jingling with coins. How lovely, romantic, graceful it looked!

And this was also exercise! Good for you!

My enthusiasm suddenly caught fire. I’m an occasional runner, but it’s hard for me, and I have to really motivate myself. This sounded like automatic motivation. I’m also a class nerd; show me a class that sounds interesting and I’ll sign up.

Since I lost my mom last year after several years of caregiving, I’ve been feeling the need to expand my world a little more. Maybe losing your last parent does this, makes you feel the years shrinking ahead of you. I knew I didn’t want my world shrinking as I age. I want to try to keep expanding it, keep learning, finding new interests.

So I found a class being offered through a local adult-learning organization. It was several months before it started, which gave me time to think about it, wonder, waffle a lot. Sometimes too much time to think can be dangerous. (Would I just be making a fool of myself?) Finally, a week before the class began, I decided to take the plunge.

 

 

We started in the middle of a July heat wave. No one had told us what to wear. I went for the least confining things I had: a white tank top and gray yoga pants. The seven-minute drive there was hot, but the studio nice and cool. I was relieved to see at least one other woman around my age. Her daughter was a belly dancer, and she already had a hip scarf. I was envious.

 Hip scarf

It surprised me how comfortable I felt. This was so different for me, yet I was excited, eager to start. The instructor asked us a little about ourselves, and I told my story of the broken foot to let her know not to expect too much. But for once it wasn’t a defensive move. I honestly didn’t care how clumsy I looked; this would be fun!

She began to show us basic moves, and the six of us tried our best to follow, but she was so graceful, moved so sinuously, that our own images in the mirrors made us look like Bigfoot by comparison.

Nevertheless, I kept reminding myself that I wasn’t doing this to become a dancer.

Through the following weeks we practiced new ways of moving: our hips, our chests,  in circles, up and down, in figure eights. Our muscles, our joints, stretched, contracted, in ways they never had before. We realized exactly how stiff we were—even the younger women among us. We practiced steps and found out how difficult it really is to move across the floor in a certain pattern of steps while raising, lowering, or undulating other parts of your body. My respect for the women who practice this ancient art grew greatly.

At the end of our second lesson the instructor told us, “Usually you have to practice at level 1 for a year or more before you really feel comfortable with the moves.” Ah, maybe I’m not hopeless at all, I thought, already projecting my thoughts farther ahead than I had considered before.

Sure, I thought, I can keep doing this!  

It isn’t easy. But at the end of each lesson I felt good, physically and mentally. And something else happened over the course of six weeks: I began to feel more graceful, whether or not I was. I began to feel the movements inside my body. I felt myself sitting up taller, pulling my stomach in, being aware of how I stepped and how my hips moved, began to stretch more and more deliberately. And I started to feel more feminine. I wanted to wrap things around myself. Shawls. Soft loose jackets. Bracelets. I started wanting to wear makeup again. I saw that the other women had painted toenails, and I wanted to paint mine, too—something I’d never really wanted to do before. Maybe even—someday—get a pedicure!

Ankle coins

Sometimes life outside your comfort zone isn’t so uncomfortable at all.

The next session starts in a few weeks, and I’ll be there.

Maybe I’ll even buy myself a hip scarf.

 

 

 

This was written for the Trifecta Writing Challenge . I took the prompt literally and went back to a memory from elementary school.

"This weekend we're asking you to harken back to your grade school days and write a haiku (an unrhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively)."

 

 

 

At Recess, Alone

Children play, but one

doesn’t join. She walks, content,

beside her own thoughts.

 

 

 

 

A Confession

 

               They sit over coffee, friends of many years, both married half a lifetime now.

               “How’s Jack?”

               “Jack’s Jack.” Grace sighs. “Always the same—like his name. Do you know that’s really his name? Not John. Not Jackson or Jacques or Giacomo. Why would parents name a boy just Jack?”

               Anne shrugs.

               “Annie, do you remember when we were kids, how we used to play being grown-up and glamorous, married to exciting men? I was going to be Graciela and you’d be Anna Maria, and our husbands—“

               “Oh, wait! I remember. Mine was…Thorne, or something?”

               “Thorndyke. And mine was Sebastian.”

               “What romance-novel names,” Anne laughs.

               “And we were going to live in a huge castle on the moors, all of us, each in one of the wings, and we’d ride horses all around the desolate landscape and listen to the voices of the spirits in the air. And our children would be half-wild and beautiful and love the wind and the rain and each other, and they’d have a tragic and passionate relationship like Heathcliff and Cathy.”

               “Now why would we have wanted that for our children?”

               “Because it was exciting and full of life.”

               “Gracie, are saying you’re unhappy with Jack?”

               “No—that would be more interesting. I’m ahappy, I guess—neutral. Somewhere in between.” She leans over the table. “Annie. I have to tell you something.”

 

A few blocks away, Jack, Just-Jack of the plain name, to whom she is not Graciela but the grace of God, is getting ready to clean out his wife’s car. He loves doing little things for her. She walked to the café to meet an old friend, so he’ll surprise her. Clean the interior, vacuum, wash the car.

               He opens the glove compartment and pulls out old badly folded maps, her registration card, the manual, a few miscellaneous papers.

               Then something drops on the seat. He picks it up and stares. For a moment he can’t grasp what he’s seeing.

And then he does.

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Written for the Trifecta challenge. This week's word: grasp.

 

A JURY OF PEERS

They begin to hear the screams just after dark. People stop what they are doing, look up from their dinner or their reading. Spouses look at each other tentatively.

“What was that?”

“It’s that damn TV next door. Comes right through the walls.”

“That’s not a TV. It’s outside.”

They rush to their windows. All along both wings of the building curtains open, shades go up, lights are turned out for better vision. Two figures near the bushes inside the curve of the driveway. A man and a woman?

“They’re just having a fight.”

“I don’t know. Looks like he’s attacking her. Maybe we should call the police.”

“Police don’t want to get involved in domestic things. Neither should we.”

A few go back to what they were doing, raising the volume of their televisions a little higher to drown out the sounds. Most are transfixed against their will, bound to the sight in front of them. The woman is on the ground now, on her hands and knees behind the bushes, blocked from the sight of some of the onlookers. The man seems to be gone, but then comes back, running toward the woman, who screams again. The watchers are getting more nervous now. They are knocking on their neighbors’ doors, asking what’s going on, if they should do something.

Look, nobody’s out there. If it was something really bad, somebody would be out there, wouldn’t they? The police would be here. They look at each other and nod hopefully. Yeah, that’s right.

Rumors start. Maybe they’re filming a movie. I saw some trucks parked around back today.

You know, I think I did hear something about filming somewhere around here.

None can admit the argument is weak. The noise subsides. They go to bed reassured.

The next day’s paper reads Woman Stabbed to Death Outside Apartment House While Dozens Look On.

They drop their heads, cover their eyes with their hands.

God, forgive us.

We didn’t know.

 

 

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Written for Trifecta Writing Challenge. This week's prompt was the third definition of the word weak: "not factually grounded or logically presented <a weak argument>"

 

My entry for Trifecta Writing Challenge this week: using the word "band" in its third definition of gathering together into a group.

Elegy

The last day of July, and I can only sit here and watch it go by. My favorite month of the year, my beloved summer, getting ready to disappear.

Soon I’ll begin to mourn for the sensuous nights, with their warm seductive breezes and the way the air smells, the leftover scent of the sun baked into leaves, grass, juniper shrubs. The way the crickets band together in the trees, their songs loudening as the days shorten, raging against the dying of the light.

Standing under green canopies in sudden summer storms, waiting for the brief chance to run to the next tree, the next doorway, trying to outrun the rain as we try to outrun the onrushing fall.

And when July turns over on its back and August eases in, with it comes the loss that will be one year old this month, the not-yet-over grieving, the longing for other years; and the cricket song repeats over and over “she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.”