dancing | Bertram's Blog

The Joy of Dancing

August 20, 2014 — Pat Bertram

While doing our routines in jazz class today, I could feel a huge smile stretching my face, and I thought, “I’m dancing!” Of course, since the realization that I was actually dancing made me lose my focus, I immediately missed a step. Still, it didn’t stop the enjoyment because after all, I’ve only been taking classes for a year, and that makes me very much a neophyte when it comes to dancing.

Dancing.

Even now, simply typing the word, I can feel glee welling up inside me.

Of all the strangenesses in my life during the past few years, falling in love with dance has to be the strangest, though in the nicest possible way.

The poster that hangs above the door of the dance studio

Dancing isn’t something I have ever had much interest in, especially classical dance, partly because I don’t have a good sense of rhythm and am not exactly graceful, so I never thought I could do any sort of choreographed dance. It seemed too complicated, not just learning the steps, but remembering the sequence of those steps and performing them with style. And yet, now I am dancing. Fortunately, a lot of dancing is about counting out the beat, generally counts of eight. . . . five, six, seven, eight. And I can count.

(I was one of those strange children who didn’t daydream, but who counted in her head whenever nothing else was going on up there. Don’t ask me why I counted. I’ve never figured it out, except perhaps there was something comforting about streams of numbers.)

But now I have many reasons to count. Ballet. Jazz. Egyptian Classical Belly Dance. Hawaiian. Tahitian. Tap. And soon, maybe even lyrical jazz. Such magical words!

During all the years of grief, when I had nothing to live for, nothing to bring me ripples of happiness no matter where I traveled or what I tried, I somehow knew only falling in love again could bring me back to life. For some bereft, falling in love with a person is the key. For others, falling in love with life is what brings them a sense of renewal.

I fell in love with dance.

I tell my teacher I owe her more than I can ever repay, and it’s true. She is teaching me not only the steps, but is imparting her own love of dancing, and dancing has brought me more joy than I could ever have imagined. (Even during the horrific months of dealing with my father’s decline and my brother’s mental problems, dance brought me a safe haven of happiness.)

Today I took a jazz class. Tomorrow, I have Hawaiian, Tahitian, and tap classes. Oh, lucky me!!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: counting in one's head, dancing, falling in love with dance, jazz dance. 7 Comments »

We Can Never Know What Life Will Bring Us

August 15, 2014 — Pat Bertram

My life is slowly winding down . . . Hmmm. That sounds ominous. Let me rephrase the sentence. The dramas and traumas of my life are slowly winding down — my life itself is going strong.

My brother is gone from the area, my father is sleeping most of the time, my sinus infection is mostly healed, my sister is trying to decide if she wants to continue catering to my father’s whims and needs or if she wants to head out. And I’m left wondering what the heck happened during the past fifteen months.

Fifteen months ago, I was mostly housebound. My father set the burglar alarm when he went to bed somewhere been 7 and 9 pm, and he wouldn’t give me the alarm code. (His compromised health made him even more paranoid than normal. I have no idea what he thought I’d do while he was asleep. Debauched parties, maybe.) Such imprisonment seems barbaric to me now, but at the time, I was still struggling to find a way out of grief for my life mate/soul mate, and nothing really mattered. Even worse, my then ninety-six-year-old father was ill, had just been released from the hospital, and I wasn’t sure he’d make it. I was waiting on him, doing whatever he wanted because he claimed he was too ill even to walk to the kitchen to get food for himself (afterward he said he thought I liked doing it, as if by letting me wait on him, he was granting me a favor). Hanging around all day and nursing him was making me feel even more imprisoned.

And then my homeless brother, who had long been estranged from my father, showed up to try to make amends. Within the month, my father came alive, shouting at my brother for innocuous little offenses that my brother couldn’t even understand. (Like being too quiet. Like eating food that had been purchased for my father. Like interrupting the old man while he was praying.) Things got worse, and finally, against my wishes, my father kicked my brother out of the house, just as he had done when my brother was sixteen.

This isn’t meant to be about my father and brother, though my father’s actions toward my brother precipitated the hell my life became. It’s about me. How my father’s resurrection angered me and allowed me to take my life back. If he had energy enough for tantrums and fights, why the heck was I catering to his every need as if he were an invalid? And so, when I found a nearby dance studio, I signed up for lessons, more for something to do than anything else, and I fell in love with dance. The very same day I took my first dance class, I also discovered the Sierra Club walk, and so my life opened up even more. I came alive.

We are gradually ending back where we started, with just me and my father. But those fifteen months are still to be reckoned with. They were some of the most horrific months of my life, dealing with both my father and dysfunctional brother. But they were also some of the most wonderful months of my life, learning to dance and making new friends.

I don’t know if I’ll ever make sense of it all, but what I am left with is the feeling that no matter how we plan, no matter how much we think we are in control, we can never know what life will bring us. Fifteen months ago, I could never have conceived of the abuse from my schizoaffective brother, never have conceived of the heartbreak of saying goodbye, maybe forever. (The brother I knew is gone. I don’t know who that tormented and tormenting stranger is.) Fifteen months ago, my grief group friends were scattering to new lives and new loves, and I was mostly alone. I couldn’t have conceived of making so many delightful new friends. Fifteen months ago, I had absolutely no interest in dance, couldn’t even have conceived of the importance it could have in my life. And all those things happened without my making a single plan.

Of course, I will continue to plan — that is my nature. But I will also be aware that plans are simply that: plans. They aren’t life. They don’t have reality. Reality shows up all on its own.

***

Posted in life, relationships. Tags: dancing, father and brother fighting, schizoaffective brother, Sierra Club walk, tormented soul. 4 Comments »

Where Things Make Sense

August 13, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Dance class still remains the one bright spot of my days, a place I can go where things make sense, where music and beauty are more important than death and sickness, where choreographed movement is powerful enough to tame even the chaos of my life. (Even though my abusive brother is gone, my 97-year-old father is still riding the rollercoaster of old age, alternating between neediness and the need to control, between accepting God’s will and clawing to live, between practiced saintliness and grumpiness.)

During the 3000 miles I traveled on my recent journey, I never once felt at home, not even when I returned to my home state (where technically I am still a resident). I certainly didn’t feel at home when I came back to my father’s house — for me this lovely house has always been a place of death and dying, mental imbalance and grief. (Only the grief was mine. The death, dying, and mental imbalance belonged, in order, to my mother, father, brother.) The one time I felt I had arrived anywhere was when I stopped by the dance studio after my trip. The teacher and my fellow students greeted me with delighted smiles and hugs, held me while I wept, took me to lunch. (Even though they didn’t all understand my tears, considering the abuse I’d been subjected to by my brother, they did understand grief.)

I’m still fighting an allergy-induced sinus infection that kept me from class yesterday, but I was determined to go to jazz class today. I’m glad I went. After we did our warm-ups, we started learning a new dance.

A year ago, when I took my first jazz lesson, I wasn’t sure I’d ever learn the steps. I couldn’t tell what the teacher was doing, couldn’t pick up her cues fast enough, couldn’t make my arms and feet do different things at the same time. By the end of the month, I knew enough so I could write down the first steps of the dance, and I practiced. Now I know that dance plus two others. And today we started a fourth.

During class, while she was counting out the beat as I’ve seen so often in movies — five, six, seven, eight — joy welled up inside me. I was dancing! Actually dancing. Me, who previously could only balter. (Means dance clumsily, for those of you who don’t want to look it up.) Actually, that’s not exactly true. I just wanted to use the word “balter”. I was simply a neophyte. My dancing up to a year ago had mostly been bobbing to a beat, though I did sort of know a polka step that my Polish mother had once tried to teach me before losing patience with my lack of rhythm. (Around that same time, my once-upon-a-time tennis champion father tried for an hour one day to teach me tennis before losing patience with my lack of talent.)

I don’t know where my life is headed. Well, obviously, none of us do. But big changes are coming and soon I won’t have a place to go, nowhere to call home, no place I particularly want to live, no one in particular to make a life with.

But for now, there is one thing I want (need!) to be . . .

Dancing.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: dancing, God's will, importance of dance, jazz, jazz dance, where I need to be, where things make sense. 4 Comments »

Trying to Believe in My Mythical and Mystical Future

July 29, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I just finished watching Joe vs. the Volcano for about the sixth time. The first time I watched it, I didn’t particularly care for the film but I watched it again and again because I could not get one image out of my mind — the scene where Tom Hanks is in the middle of the ocean, floating on his makeshift raft, and dancing.

A similar scene in Talent for the Game has Lorraine Bracco and Edward James Olmos running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, turning on the radio, and dancing.

I always wished I were like that — able to live to the fullest even when things were at their worst, but I usually cry. Crying is how I relieve stress, though dancing would probably be a better choice. At least in these two movies, after dancing, the characters find what they want even if it’s not exactly what they are looking for.

Joe vs. the Volcano has since become my favorite movie. It’s beautifully written, stylish, philosophical, and fun (though I still find the island folk a bit over the top and ridiculous). The story’s basic premise seems to be: live, take a chance, see what happens. (Come to think of it, that’s more or less the same theme of Talent for the Game.)

I’ve been having a crisis of faith lately. During all these years since the death of Jeff, my life mate/soul mate, I’ve clung to the idea that great wonders are in store for me if I can just embrace life, but now that my transitional life is winding down midst conflicts and drama, I’m beginning to feel the first stirrings of worry.

When I have to leave here, I don’t want to settle down in any sort of rental somewhere, don’t want to live on the road, just don’t want to deal with any of it. I’ve known from the beginning of my stay here that the second half of my grief’s journey is still to come. The first half is away from pain and sorrow, the second half is toward . . . joy, perhaps. I am very aware that I will not be going home to Jeff. Very aware I will not even have a home base as I did here. Aware that the emptiness I have held at bay may once again take hold of me. Aware of my limited financial resources.

When I expressed such a sentiment to a friend who lost her soul mate around the same time I did, she reminded me that life works itself out in unforeseen ways — when things seem most dire, opportunity can fall out of the sky and land in our lap.

Despite my momentary lack of courage, I am trying not to worry, trying to take each conflict/trauma/drama as it comes, trying to do the best I can for everyone involved even though my best so often falls short of wisdom.

Most of all, I am trying to believe in my mythical and mystical future. If dancing can make it so, as in the movies, well . . . I am dancing.

***

Posted in grief, life. Tags: crisis of faith, dancing, Edward James Olmos, grief and joy, Joe vs. the Volcano, Lorraine Bracco, Talent for the Game. 2 Comments »

Becoming Dance

July 10, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Of all the strange places my recent life has taken me, this has to be the strangest. I am sitting in lobby of a convalescent home, waiting for my father to wake from a nap. He’s only here for five days to get intravenous antibiotics to help treat a bout of pneumonia, but the few hours I’ve spent visiting him have made me realize how incredibly lucky I am.

I can walk with a straight back and easy gait. I can breathe unassisted. And oh! I feel so very young. I know this is a temporary condition. If I live long enough, I’ll be as old and decrepit as these folks, but for now, I’m thankful for what youth I have left, for the joy that now comes at increasingly frequent intervals, for the capacity to taste what I eat and drink, for the ability to write and laugh and dance.

Strangely, not only do I feel good, people often mention that I look good, too. Some even say that stress becomes me. The wonder is that I can deal at all with the horrendous stresses of my life — an ailing, aging father and an insane and insanely drunk brother who has spent the past several hours bellowing at me. I am blessed to have wonderful and patient friends who will listen to my horror stories, sometimes for the second and third time, and who will offer hugs when I need them. I have this blog, of course. But mostly I have dancing.

We all need vacations from ourselves and our problems, but when we go on trips, we take ourselves with us. When we dance, especially choreographed dances, we leave ourselves at home. We become the music, the motion, and something else — part of a dancing whole. As the teacher keeps reminding us, we need to do everything in unison — one body, one mind, one soul. When it works, when we know the dance and are in perfect sync, it’s magic. For just one moment, we become more than we are. We become Dance.

Of course, after dance, we become just ourselves with all our attendant problems, but we still have the memory of that moment of freedom to sustain us, and hopefully we’ll still have it even when we’re too old to dance at all.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: dance, dancing, importance of dancing, stress and dancing, stress and friends, stress and hugs. 2 Comments »

Danceless

June 19, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Today I missed dance class for the first time since I began taking lessons, and I feel bereft, as if I misplaced something I can never get back. I can go back to class, of course, but today’s classes were special in the way that all moments are special — each is a treasure, a singular occasion, that will never happen in exactly the same way twice.

More than that, dance is currently my savior, helping me get through the daily traumas of my life, and there have been more traumas than usual lately, especially the past 22 hours, so I needed those classes more than ever.

And yet, here I sit . . . danceless. Even if I wanted to practice the dances I’ve learned, I couldn’t. I’m exhausted.

tugofwar I know you’re dying to know what this is all about, so I’ll tell you — it’s just life.

More specifically, my car stopped running as I started out on my way to meet up for the Sierra Club walk last night. No gas seemed to be getting to the engine, which leads me to assume the fuel pump broke down. Not a problem, really, since I have emergency road insurance, and they will tow the car to be fixed.

What was a problem is that a few minutes after I coasted back down the hill and into the garage (how resourceful am I!), my father went through a minor medical emergency. I was up all night dealing with both him and my brother who seemed to sense the chaos. Early this morning my father decided he needed to go to the hospital via ambulence. I spent hours at the emergency room with him, but they didn’t want to admit him, so the rest of the day was spent begging rides from the hospital for both of us, rides to the pharmacy for his antibiotics, and then to another pharmacy because the first had no pharmacist on duty. (How can a major pharmacy not have a pharmacist on duty? Strange, that.) And to top it off, I had to forgo a treat I was looking forward to.

I sound selfish, don’t I? Well, that’s life, too.

Temporarily, all is quiet. Both men seem to be resting, and me . . . I’m here on this blog, trying to make sense of it all.

***

Posted in life, relationships. Tags: dance lessons, dancing, emergencies, tramaus of life. 4 Comments »

My Polarized Life — The Profound and the Profane

June 18, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m sitting here trying to think of something uplifting to say. It’s not that today is a bad day, it’s just that like all my days, it’s too polarized — from the profound experience of learning to dance to the profane experience of life in my father’s house.

My father is 97 years old and is doing well — he gets up and can walk around by himself, can even take off the oxygen for a few minutes if he needs to go beyond the tether of the tubing. He mostly looks after himself, but the every day aspects of life are beginning to defeat him. He has a hard time concentrating and remembering, though these lacks are due to congestive heart failure and age, not Alzheimer’s. (He recently took and passed an Alzheimer’s test.) Still, there are always personal things that he needs me to take care of, such as shopping and cooking what few cooked foods he eats. There are frequent house matters for me to take care of such as bad television, phone, and computer reception. And there is my dysfunctional homeless brother who is currently camping out in the garage.

For some reason — perhaps because I am here — my brother delights in tormenting me, calling me childish names such as “Porky” and “Lard Ass” as well as more adult-rated names. He is obviously suffering, and I am trying to be kind to him, even when he graffities car and bangs on my windows for hours at a time, but I have no idea what he really wants. Even if I did know, I’m not sure I could do anything for him. His problems are way out of my ability to comprehend. His relationship with his problems is even harder to fathom. He likes his “evil” side. He thinks it’s the best part of him, and perhaps it is. His core personality seems to be humble and self-effacing, helpless, even, like a bewildered little boy stuck inside a grown man’s decaying body. For sure, he has no interest in getting help to balance himself out.

dance I sometimes think of moving on and leaving my father and brother to fend for themselves, but I’m not sure I want to be the sort of person who can walk out on her aged, increasingly confused father and leave him to care for himself. (My brother sure couldn’t do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to be able to recognize that anyone but himself needs help.)

Besides, if I moved on, I’d have to give up dancing. The irony is that by being here in this bizarre household, I have the freedom to indulge my newfound love of dancing. If I left, I’d have to get a job, which would leave me no time or energy for dance classes, and for now, dancing is important to me. It feels like a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey. It has lessons to teach me beyond the discipline of the basic steps and the joy of the choreographed dances I am learning, though I’m not sure what those lessons are. I might never know since much of dance is subliminal, needing the focus of both the body’s mind as well as the mind’s mind and perhaps even the soul.

As Shirley MacLaine said, “Dance is an art that impends on the soul. It is with you every moment, it expresses itself in everything you do.”

Whatever lessons I learn from dance will be with me long after the memories of this household have faded. Dance is that important. And so I continue this polarized existence, paying for the profound privilege of dancing with the profanity in the rest of my life.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: dancing, dancing as a pilgrimage, importance of dance, Shirley MacLaine and dancing. 4 Comments »

On a Pilgrimage

June 4, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Today when I mentioned my idea of walking up the coast, a friend asked, “Why walking?” I had to stop and think about that. I originally planned a journey by car, crisscrossing the country, so I’m not sure how the idea of driving metamorphosed into walking, or why the idea took hold except that I’ve always had an affinity for walking.

When I first started roaming the desert after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I would follow the paths drawn in the sandy soil by bikes and ATVs, always wanting to see what was up ahead, around the next turning, behind the next knoll. I had to be careful not to wear myself out because I needed to make sure I had enough energy to get myself back to home base, and I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if there were no home base, if I could just walk until I got tired, and when I was rested, continue on. Such practical things as being able to carry enough water, food, and protective coverings to get me to wherever I was going didn’t enter the equation. I just like the idea of walking to see . . . whatever there was to see.

Back then, I was still going through the pain of first grief, and walking was the only way I could find any peace. Somedays I walked for hours, limited only by my strength and the amount of water I’d brought. My walking, though it was always circular rather than to a special place, seemed like a pilgrimage, a long journey to a new life. My old life was dead, cremated along with my life mate/soul mate, and somehow I had to find a new way to connect with the world. My current idea of walking up the Pacific coast seems like a continuation of that grief-born pilgrimage.

“Pilgrimage” has been defined variously as any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest; a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance; a walk in search of something intangible. Although making a pilgrimage was not my intention when I first thought of walking up the coast, “pilgrimage” seems to define most what I want out of the journey. I don’t want the journey to be one of survival (though I do intend to survive it, of course). My wilderness survival skills are nil, so in any contest between me and the wilderness, the wilderness would win. My ability to carry a heavy pack is also nil. And yet, I would like to see the coast more intimately than from the window of a car passing by at 65 miles an hour, with only periodic stops to rest. I would like to see what I am made of. Could I handle the endless hours of nothing to do after my walking stint is finished for the day? How would I connect with the world? Could I handle the uncertainty of never quite knowing what will happen? Could I spend so much time outside without becoming ill? I’d stay in motels when I could, but for long stretches, there would be just me and whatever was around the next bend.

Meantime, I am on another pilgrimage. Bruce Chatwin in Anatomy of Restlessness wrote, “To dance is to go on pilgrimage.” Some people see dancing just as exercise, but for me it’s a way of connecting with life, of being alive, of searching for something intangible, if only proficiency and grace. Dance is a journey of the spirit just as I would hope an epic walk would be, and it’s changing me in some ephemeral way. For example, for the first time in my life, I have no body image problems. All that time in front of a mirror is making me comfortable with the way I look, both my good points and bad. Dancing also seems to reach inside to hidden places and pull out previously unknown joys.

Dancing is the one thing besides physical inability that would change my mind about walking up the coast. It’s a rare and special privilege to be able to learn how to dance at any age but especially when one is sliding down the banister of life.

At the beginning of my journey into grief, a wise woman told me that I could be entering the happiest time of my life, and though it took longer than I expected, I can see that she was right. The pain of grief seems like a portal I went through, and now on the other side I can feel the possibility of true happiness and joy.

Walking. Dancing. Embracing whatever the future might bring.

My pilgrimage.

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