I’m alone at last.  Here all this time I thought I’d prefer not to be.  I’d even been considering renting out a room if things got any tougher in the stock market.  Two weeks ago my middle daughter and her boyfriend moved in.  Until March.  They don’t want to be here any more than I want them to be here but we all get along well — Actually, the boyfriend and I get along the best — and once he goes back to Alaska she will get a place of her own.  Their lease expires in February.  They were sharing a house with a couple who have decided to get a divorce, and the stress level was getting intolerable. 

Sooo, I’m alone for four days because they’ve gone to the beach house for New Year’s.  It was a family tradition that is being carried on by the children.  Or at least one of them.  The oldest couldn’t get away and the youngest left from the beach to drive back to San Francisco. 

Christmas was good, though, as we are all closer than ever.  One night all three girls spent the night in the same bed.  We’d been out to dinner and then came home to play cards.  One of the kids told a friend of mine it was the best time she’d ever had with the family.

It has occurred to me that I shouldn’t be so wrapped up in my children, now that they all live else– Uh, now that two of them live elsewhere.  But we are on the phone with each other almost every day.  The middle one who’s living here thinks I need a boyfriend, and she was giving me tips about how I might go about getting one.  She’s going to get me all dolled up, and the two of us are going to go looking for a man for me.  “Good luck” is what I told her.  I mean spotting one.  The whole time she’s coaching me about what to say I’m thinking she’s nuts but realizing how much better my odds would be with her at the table.  Isn’t that awful!

I bought drapes.  Now I have heat AND drapes, and I’m loving my house.  There’s a very small room, directly across from my bedroom, which I have set up as the writing room.  I had all the carpets cleaned months ago, and they left the furniture all piled up in the center of the room.  The only reason I go in there is to get off-season clothes out of the closet.  Until I got drapes.  So I set the room back up  a couple nights ago, and because the sun is pouring in through the windows today — that in itself (I live in Oregon) is call for rejoice — I sat down in the crazy orange patterned chair with the matching ottoman and looked over at my writing desk.  Aside from the dust, it was just the way I left it:  empty.  It’s a little secretary with delicate hinges supporting just enough mahogony to accomodate my notebook.  I try not to lean on it.

I consider this computer area more of an office desk.  There’s so much paper piled here with stock stuff, plus the tv is usually blaring, displaying the ticker tape, so it’s hard for me to concentrate long enough to form a good sentence.  The phone’s here, too, and it always seems like it’s ringing.  The biggest distraction, though, is the dog.  Like now.  She comes by every other minute to rest her soft, whiskery muzzle against my left hand, pushing my pinky finger off the A key to remind me that I said we were going for a walk.  I even have my walking shoes on but I am waiting for a burrito to heat up.  Mmmm, it’s something I made last night with black beans and a zippy sauce. 

I looked at the wall in the writing room, opposite the secretary, and noticed that print of The Thinker I bought at an estate sale.  It really belongs over the desk but that would have required a hammer and nail.  And as I was looking at him I got that feeling in my gut I get lately when God is yelling at me to pay attention.  It’s time to write again.  Seriously.

I wrote this for Featured_Grownups  the other day and, reading it now, I don’t like the way I sound, but I’m not changing it because it’s true:

     I’m really glad the pick was holiday tradition, because it reminds me that Christmas Eve looms ahead and, once again, I may find myself spending it like any other day. 

     When I left I felt so bad for the kids that I gave up all my holidays with them so that they could continue to spend that time the way they always had, with my husband’s family.  I mean ex-.  The first year I wasn’t well enough to do anything, so being invited to friends’ homes for Thanksgiving and then Christmas Eve seemed wonderful.  The next year, when I was well and on my feet but just lonely, I remember being uncomfortable when it came time for the hospitable family to open their gifts.  It should have been private family time, and I felt like an intrusion.  The following three years I had a succession of boyfriends, and we celebrated at my house.  It was romantic but odd not to be with family. 

     My sister quit doing Christmas Eve – Actually, for 28 years she did Christmas Day, I did Thanksgiving, and my husband’s brother did Christmas Eve.  Now that my sister has left her husband, my brother has begun inviting us to Christmas Eve but I’m always so busy that night, as the girls show up pretty early Christmas morning to open their stockings.  Plus, that would be back-to-back dinners with his “significant other.”  That’s what I’m supposed to call her.  I like her, she’s just intense.  And she drinks.  And she’s very political.  It’s the two together that don’t mix well for her.

     One year I went to a restaurant near my house.  It was nice.  But like the romantic dinners with boyfriends it just seemed odd, though I did enjoy watching one family struggle through dinner.  I remember a woman about my age, obviously not from around here, who was nervously waiting for her family to show up.  They all came separately, hugging hello, but seemed stiff and careful with each other through dinner.  I gathered people came and went from that clan and each year was different.

     One year I went to mass.  That’s overrated.  We sang dumb songs and it was entirely too crowded.    For years I had been under the impression that people would be dressed in velvet; that incense would perfume the air; and that the floor-to-ceiling pipe organ, which is the best in the city, would move me to tears at midnight.  We sang jingle bells, all wedged up next to each other with the suffocating smell of wet shoes and dinner breath making me want to bolt.

 I sometimes think I should help serve dinner in a homeless shelter but I can never bring myself to sign up.  That just sounds soooo depressing.  I can’t go out of town, as I have the kids in the morning. I’d really like to think of a new tradition, either one that I could share with strangers or something I could do alone.  Any ideas?

I got up early to see a show which recaps what’s happened in the stock market for the week.  And what a week it was.  I’m in pretty good shape, for the time being.  That could all change but the stocks I bought  this week did not sell off Friday so I am hopeful.  And after watching the show I feel validated, for my picks were theirs’.

I have been beating myself up for not writing but I think I should give myself credit for dancing.  Between attending dance class Wednesday night, teaching Tuesday night and bellydancing at my blues bar twice a week,  I’m in pretty good shape for an old broad. What I hadn’t realized was the progress I’ve made over the years.  I was in class this week and the teacher said just do what you want for the last five minutes.  She put a song on and two minutes later I noticed I was the only one dancing.  We were in a HUGE space with the front and back walls totally mirrored.  We had flung our veils off from the group choreography and were standing away from the mirrors, in the center of the room. 

When you are in class, facing the mirror, following a teacher, you get used to the idea that bellydance is all about the mechanics of the moves.  And you get used to following.  Even though I performed, it was always choreographed.  Then my tribal teacher got pregnant and quit teaching, and my cabaret teacher moved to Egypt, and I ended up alone in my kitchen with no mirrors, dancing to rock n roll. 

Years went by, and I’d quit dancing until I moved over here and discovered the blues.  Slowly, I started feeling confident enough to bellydance at the bar.  Until last week in class I’d not realized what progress I’ve made, for I have overcome my phobia about dancing to live, Egyptian music.  It is tricky, as there are lots of rhythm changes and stops where you need to accent a beat with your hips or chest or arms, and you don’t know when that stop is coming.  The idea of performing to a live drum solo was terrifying, previously.  But every Sunday the drummer gives me a little something to play with, and, slowly, I’ve gotten over my fears. 

The other scary thing is the end of the song.  It’s hard to time your last and biggest move with the drummer, but it’s always the same guy every Sunday, and they play a lot of the same songs, so maybe I’ve become accustomed to hearing the end.  All I know is that in class, with all eyes on me, I nailed it.  I went to bed that night, proud of my progress. 

Two weeks ago, when I was at the McMenamins Kennedy School for a Recorder Society meeting (30 people showed up and a world renowned bass player came from Seattle to teach it) I ran into some bellydancers who were also there for a function.  The band was the same band I used to dance to every Thursday, and the woman who books the dancers now is someone who was taking private lessons from my cabaret teacher the same time I was.  She won a contest using some of my own choreography.  Without asking.  It was my song and my dance but I blame the teacher for that. We had choreographed it together but I wanted to use another dance for the competition because I had issues with some of her big, showy moves.  What I was witnessing wasn’t the competition but a show honoring my teacher and the winners from the previous competition.  They obviously hadn’t expected me to show up, as I could barely walk, being in the middle of my second round of chemo.  This was in 2001.  It was a good lesson though because sitting in the audience, watching this woman doing those cheesy moves, (all the while filled with shock and jealousy) I remember being surprised how good those same moves looked from a distance.  Just because something feels cheesy doesn’t mean it won’t look good.  

I snuck out of the recorder session to go back where the bellydancers were because I’d seen the thief at the door, selling tickets, and I thought maybe there would be other dancers I knew.  She told me to come by Thursday night where they all hang out now.   She seemed friendlier this week, and I got to watch her dance after the performers were done.  The audience gets up on the dance floor in between performances.  She’s still good, having danced her way through all these years I’ve been gone.  She had that same old look on her face after hugging me, like she’s got a secret.  The band was playing, and we were standing off to the side of the stage.  She went into a chest pop and a roll-up while I stood there, smiling back.  She’s still beating me. What she doesn’t know is that I can still dance.