And then dance
This is for when the day has been a bit long and your patience has been a bit short
Hi friends,
This is for when the day has been a bit long and your patience has been a bit short, when you find yourself saying things like I’m Just Tired or Because I Said So, That’s Why or I’m Worried or even just a constant refrain of It’s Been Really Busy.
It’s for when you forgot to eat breakfast. It’s for when you feel a bit powerless. It’s for disappointments and crammed calendars and failures. It’s for the painful awareness of the gap between your ideals and your realities. It’s for the nights you didn’t sleep for worrying about your kids. It’s for the days when you wish you’d kept your mouth shut; maybe it’s for the days when you wish you would have spoken up, too. It’s for the never-ending pile of laundry and the fingerprints on everything and the ways you wish you could do it all over again but knowing what you know now. It’s for when you sort of want to burn down the Internet. You want to run away to live in a library, eating nothing but bread and cheese and apples for the rest of your life, maybe you’ll get a few chickens, but right now you’re out of coffee.
So here is the thing: open all the windows. Let the outside air sweep through the house, into your lungs. Tidy up the kitchen. Put on your Fleetwood Mac t-shirt and walk to the elementary school for the carnival, even though you have a million things to do and you feel about as jolly as a dirty sock.
Walk there because it’s your last little baby’s end of the year party and there is only one more year of elementary school left in your life - and your eldest daughter graduated high school just this week and now you know how fast it goes. Now you know how your pride and joy can be feel so much like grief sometimes.
Show up. Show up. Show up with a grin. Stand in the long line for popcorn and cheer for the hula hoop competition. Admire the glitter tattoos adorning every little face. Thank the teachers who have loved your kid so well, God, what would we do without our teachers? Trail after your kid who wants to play on the playground again, who wants a freezie, who wants you to love the place she loves.
And when the DJ/dad volunteer puts Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, the favourite of celebrities and kids alike, onto the crackling speakers then make eye contact with her just in time to see absolute joy erupt. Their friends are running to the cement slab near the library, where the speakers are blaring, to dance together. Grab your kid’s hand and start to run, run all the way to the DJ booth now surrounded by kids dancing the gritty or whatever it’s called, or just bouncing furiously.
And then dance. Dance. Dance. Dance.
Twist your hips and waggle your bum, raise your hands above your head and swing wild. Listen to your kid and their friends laugh at you. Grab their hands and swing in a circle. Flail around in front of God and everybody, knowing you can’t dance and not caring, singing at the top of your lungs that you want to shake, shake, shake it off.
Dance until your thighs ache and you break a sweat. Kick a bit, you’re really bad at this. Dance until your eyes are stinging with unshed tears because your kid’s smile is so big, you can see her molars. Her face is bright red with joy, her eyes squinty with laughter over her mum churning it up. Sing loud and play air guitar, when they holler “Watch me, mum!” your eyes are already there, memorizing the moment. When you see other parents watching you, dance harder because you feel weird and self-conscious. When another mum joins in, telegraph your gratitude to her.
Eventually you’ll stop. (You can’t dance like you did when you were younger, you’re too out of breath, you’re not twenty in the club anymore.) But for that one brief, glorious moment in the sunshine at the school carnival, you made your kid happy and you danced.
In the middle of all the heartache and the bills, in the middle of the apocalypse and knowing everything you can’t un-know, in the long list of chores and the ways you’re trying to hold the universe together for one small family, you danced.
Maybe this is for the days when you are becoming well-aware that you will not be changing the world, that was an idealist’s dream, and so you are learning to love this world, this small particular place and these particular people, knowing that that was probably the invitation all along anyway.
And while the Top 40 clean versions play on and the kids race off to the next thing, it will be too much joy, all of a sudden. Too much richness, all of a sudden. Too much gratitude, all of a sudden. And you won’t be able to catch your breath for all the thankfulness and sadness and happiness and longing and satisfaction colliding in you. You’ll think to yourself that you should dance more, not to escape this life but to love this life.
Your kid will tell you their face hurts from smiling. At the end of the night, you’ll walk home together.
Love S.
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In case you missed these recent Field Notes:
15 things you told me: In which I offer a peek behind the curtain
Flowers and Other Ordinary Altars for Memory: Or, when it doesn't hurt as much to remember
An Update: Penny in the Air: Because people should never be the collateral damage of your theology
Gaza: I don’t know if bearing witness, if keeping my soul tender, if loving each other even from far away is enough, it probably isn’t, but I want to believe it is something anyway.
A Blessing for Our Graduate: You have nothing to prove and nothing to earn, you are already so loved.
Oh, to be able to go back... My son passed away at 26 from a rare cancer in 2022. Eight months before his death he married the love of his life and their 'reception' at a local pub, as my cousin's band played, is forever burned in my mind. The look of pure, unadulterated joy as Liam and Jacob danced and sang along, even in the knowledge of Liam's terrible diagnosis, still warms my heart. The memory of watching them dance with complete strangers, all of them congratulating the newly weds, still brings me to tears. These moments are pure grace, and I know I hold on to them tightly as I grieve my son. On the many days when I feel about as 'jolly as a dirty sock', I remember their love, and my love for them, and I am learning to dance again slowly...
Gorgeous! What a glorious slice of life this is. It's the kind of thing that's going to have me keeping my eyes peeled wide for opportunities like this in my own life. Thank you.
P.S. While you don't seem like the merch type, I desperately need a holiday sweater that says, "Feeling about as jolly as a dirty sock." I might have to embroider one myself.