What happened on Saturday

The dance we made, that I wrote about last week:

The drive was lovely.

Good conversation with the three friends I was allowed to bring. We talked about what to expect when we got there. They asked questions and I answered, as best as I could, and then we talked about other things.

I brought oddball items of food for the drive: a cabbage, raisins, parmesan cheese to eat with a spoon. They brought food that was more normal: watermelon, nuts, sandwiches, strawberries, chocolate. I don’t even know what I’m doing right now, with food. Why I can’t get a handle on it.

Anyway, we arrived.

Everyone got signed in and we were given the correct badges. We made our way to where the performance would take place.

A few of the guys were already there, cleaning and getting things set up, which was a sweet and unexpected surprise. I had prepared everyone in the car to be ready to move tables and chairs. I’d do the sweeping and the mopping, so they didn’t need to worry about that part. But the guys were doing all of it, already.

I checked that the CD was in the CD player, and then everything came to grinding halt.

We got frozen in place.

Something had not gone as it should, and no one was allowed to move from one location to another. We needed to stay where we were, and the performers and audience they were bringing needed to stay where they were, which was far away from us.

My eyes glued themselves to the clock then, because we had been given a limited amount of time to do this — two hours for the whole thing which included:

• Grounding, check-in, warm-up

• Performance

• Q & A

• Appreciation for the performers, and handing them each a certificate. Naming what each individual had contributed to the process.

• Distributing the cupcakes, rice crispy treats, and lemonade that Julie brought. Making time to mingle and chat.

We were now running 30 minutes late. My agitation started creeping.

I kept it at bay and I got everyone who was there, the handful of us who had come in from the outside along with the handful of guys who were there from the inside, dancing. I paired and mixed everyone up: if you were coming in from the outside, find a partner from the inside, that sort of thing.

Everyone was dancing, interacting, connecting, laughing, and I kept eyeing the clock, which was not stopping. We were now 45 minutes behind schedule, and they were still were not here.

We took a break from dancing and got everyone seated in a circle for introductions (that part went backward — the introductions should have happened first, but I was disoriented from being frozen and from being held).

When it was my turn to say who I was, an anger in my welled up like I have not felt in a long time. An anger because we were here and they were there and there was nothing to do about it. Would we drive back home without a performance? A witnessing of their work?

Nibbling on a few cabbage leaves and inhaling a handful of raisins before going inside did not help. Julie got me a rice crispy treat, I chomped it down, and then I could speak.

I said to the circle, “My name is Joanna and what I feel right now is rage.”

Rage because to get this small showing to happen had taken months and months, weeks and weeks, days and days, of work: preparation and communications; back and of forth emails, phone calls; finding a date and a time that worked for everyone; the heavy lift to get a handful of people from the outside, in.

And within all of that was the time it taken to build a space of refuge. To take the time for trust, camaraderie, and willingness to emerge, so that we could access the tender place, too dance from.

And we had done it. We had done all of those things — we had even brought the treats — and we were all here, and there they all were there, and a full hour had now gone by. Our time had been cut in half.

If we stayed frozen in place much longer, I couldn’t see how we would get the above list, even a modified version of it, completed.

I gripped the chair with both of my hands, looked down so no one could see my face, and seethed. Just as I was about to break, there was a groan and a clunk, and the place started moving again.

A few minutes later, there they all were.

I’m sad to say that I did a terrible job getting everyone ready to perform:

How I wish I had taken a breath; wish I had eaten a better snack; wish I had said a quick thing or two about joy and delight. That that is where we were now, in the process, and it was time to take all of our hard work and focus in on those things. It was time to trust in the unfolding, because they were about to dance, and we were about to watch, and what could be better than that?

But I didn’t say any of that. I don’t know what I said. All I know is that I rushed and that I said something that was nothing, and then they were in place, and then the music started, and then they were dancing, and this is how it went:

• There were a few sections where they were milling, even though we had mapped out clear pathways for dancing.

• At one point, they were in the wrong dance. I was wondering if I should yell from the side, “Hey, you guys, you’re in the reach for hands section. This is the body as a bird section.” But I didn’t. I let it play out, and about half way through they realized it, and somehow they got themselves back to body as bird.

• The spacing was off. There were gaps were there shouldn’t have been gaps, and at one point they all crowded into a corner when they should have been spread out. It was like they were getting as close as they could to each other, for warmth.

Despite that, something bigger carried them through and made those technicalities not matter really, at all:

The openness of their bodies and their connection to each other. The humor, pride, grace and strength, in each of them. The housing of a reverberating vulnerability so that the longing, the belonging, of those bodies, moving through space and time, was beautiful and breathtaking.

A standing ovation for the dancers, then comments and questions. My favorite from an audience member who resides inside. He stood up and said, “All I saw was love. All I saw was beauty.” Then he sat back down.

I handed out the certificates Julie had gotten ready for us. Printed and filled out with each of their names. I said whatever I said to each of them, right on the spot, because I had forgotten all of my notecards I had worked so hard on, writing that all down, at home.

Then cupcakes and chatting.

Good-byes and high fives.

On the car ride home we talked about all that had happened and what we had experienced. That rich and continuous conversation between the four of us.

Finally falling into bed, waiting for sleep but not finding it because all I could think about was Glen and how he would have been there for this.

How he would have checked to make sure I had enough good food for the drive, and then packed some more. How he would have asked if I had my notecards before we left. How he would have slowed me down so that when I gathered the guys, right before they performed, I would have been able to say all that was important to say, rather than all that was not.

How he would have bumped me with his shoulder when it was going really well, and how he would have reached for my hand when it wasn’t.

How he would have gotten a chicken sandwich, with lettuce and tomato, into my hands before I went inside that day.

How he would have whispered to me, “EAT!”

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One more thing:

On a whim I applied to be in a writing program, where if accepted, a mentor guides you through a year of writing a book.

I knew I wouldn’t get in. There was just no way from everything I read about it — I wasn’t matching the ambition. I applied anyway, a kinda “why not?” situation, and a few weeks later I got an email saying “Congratulations!”

I met my mentor last week on Zoom and I fell, the tiniest bit, in love, because she gets it. Gets what I’m trying to do with this newsletter I write to you each week, and what I’m trying to say. How I’m braiding all of it: the dancing, the dying, the dog, the shop, the house, the going forward.

She was bouncing as she talked about how we might approach this coming year together. How it might all work.

How can you not fall, the tiniest bit fall, in love, with that?

xo,

jo

photo by Tatiana Davila, of Glen