The Trick to Feeling Young

Nothing. The stark track lights tossed my shadow against the floor. My heart couldn’t slow, couldn’t melt the steps into my blood. I sounded old. My breath filled the room with a phantom echo. Pixie threw me a worried look. She didn’t know the essence that orders the universe decided to slice me into one thousand slivers of Birdie and pass around the plate.

Everyone gets a piece. I felt sweat drip between my breasts as I caught my breath. Everyone gets to scarf me down, burp, live on my calories. I’m not making a decent living. I’m not organizing my potential into darts, letting them fly, letting them hit some unknown rings with a big prize in the middle. I’m coasting, and it’s all flashy silver streaks beneath my feet, an echo of drum, I can’t keep up, can’t make feet match arms match anything, anything, anything, just a rim shot echo in my wake. I slipped off my tap shoes and stuffed them in my backpack.

Pixie began the next class by passing out CDs. She handed the Black Eyed Peas to a girl with an eyebrow piercing, Kanye West to a chubby brown-haired girl with a satin belly shirt, Beyonce to Blondie. Pixie explained that in eleven weeks we’d dance for our parents—Oh Sorry, she said, glancing in my direction—each of us, one by one, with our own choreography, our own song.

Oh great, I thought, who am I gonna get? Britney Spears?

“Ms. Jaworski? I picked something old-fashioned for you. I thought you’d be more comfortable with that.”

I reached my hand out with a maniacal smile across my face, gimme, gimme, gimme! I’m getting something classic! Maybe the Maple Leaf Rag! Or maybe the Chattanooga Choo Choo! I stared at the splotchy scrawl of marker on the disk in my hand, my smile hardening like plaster. Donna Summer?! Hot Stuff?! Yikes.

Eleven weeks of Donna Summer, of tap, tap, tap, tap through the kitchen, heel toe, heel toe, shuffle, toe, tap tap tap, change the movie from Star Trek to Japanese anime, then tap tap tap shuffle, toe, heel, shuffle, back to the kitchen, mix melted dark chocolate with butter and sugar and eggs and a splash of that good Mexican vanilla, flour, pinch of salt, handful of macadamia nuts from my backyard, shove it in the oven for a sweet treat. And, dammit, just dammit to Hades and back, my dance skills needed serious improvement.

My son, age ten, poked his head out his bedroom door as I shuffle-ball-chained through the hallway in a pair of candy-striped shorts and a dingy wife beater. I tried to move my arms like Donna Summer, like a disco diva, raised them high over my head and gave a good bump-and-grind as I turned the corner to the living room.

“Geez, mom. You look like Richard Simmons. Please, whatever you do, no ‘jazz hands!’”

Rats. Jazz hands were my best move! My gramma used to tell me there was no greater glory you could give to God than dancing, especially when you didn’t feel like it, when the sun didn’t shine and the money didn’t arrive and the furnace broke down.

“You have to dance, Birdie, as long as your body works, and don’t give two cents what anyone else says.”

Gramma would sweep one arm around her old kitchen, point at her coffee percolator, twirl on one foot, let her big belly follow, and we’d laugh, laugh and twirl, just laugh.

Just be Gramma.