Tap Dancing

 

“She’s taking tap dancing lessons with a retired former Rockette! Can you believe that?”
I can’t. I’m on the other side of the locker room in my usual panic to get out before the lifeguards start yelling at us that the pool is closed. But this snippet of conversation floats over to me, and, undeniably, needs to be documented. The speaker goes on. She’s holding court. The other women, maybe 5 or 6 of them, are all sitting on benches in various stages of trying to get dressed. Some tugging at their leggings. Others bending over,  stretching damp socks on wet feet. Some still in the beginning stages, just sitting there on the bench, staring into space.

            “She has so much energy! And not only does she take tap dancing, but she also works a full-time job!” The speaker exclaims. “I feel like a slug next to her!”

            I laugh to myself. A slug! Exactly how I feel many days. Today, I was a little less slug-like, but only in the water. Once I’m on land, forget it. I’m slugging along.

            “25 minutes is better than nothing!” L exclaims into the air as she emerges from the shower.

            I holler back, “Totally! It’s great!”

            “I just feel so much better than I did before the pool.”

            And, here is this theme again. Water and euphoria. Does a tap dancing Rockett student feel euphoria I wonder. It’s hard to imagine.

            I remember when I tried to take tap dancing in college from the fabulous Audrey Flint. She had a small group of us, some who had a little experience dancing, and some, like me with none. Every time she said, “And to the right,” I’d go left. And every time she said, “And left….” I’d go right.

            I was directionally challenged. Like my father. A very smart man. But the right/ left mix- up is a family trait. I’ve learned to adapt to this challenge. Mr. Ian came up with the idea that the left can be identified as the ‘bass’ and the right as the ‘treble’, thinking that since I’m a pianist, I’d get this.

            Sometimes I do. But more often than not, I still have to think about it. I’ll be driving us to the pool and Ian will say, “Turn bass.” I immediately think of a Brahms piece I’m working on, one of the intermezzos in Op 118 and how it actually has the lowest A on the keyboard in the piece!

            Not really helpful to be thinking about Brahms while driving down Barrett Avenue in Richmond.

            Needless to say, I was a complete disaster as a tap dancer. I remember doggedly trying to keep up with the routine, but only for a short amount of time. Audrey was a complete professional, cheerful and patient. But I just didn’t have what it took to tap dance.

            “Carol, slow down!” L hollers at me.

            I laugh. “I am! So slow!”

            “No, I think you pick up speed as you go along,” Alice observes.

            “Maybe,” I agree, throwing on my big swim parka to prepare for the breezy rain showers.

            “Where did you get that sweater? It’s so cute!”

            The women continue their chatter. No one seems that worried about getting out by the 15-minute cut-off time.

            They just keep on tap dancing. One question at a time. One laugh at a time. One step at a time….

I Don’t Understand

 

“I tell my neighbors when they go on Next Door that it’s a bot that’s generating the complaints. It’s not a Real Person. It’s AI!”

            In the shower after a crowded, rushed swim at Kennedy High Pool, I stand under the stream of hot water, trying to get warm and trying to understand the conversation I’ve walked in on. Alice is talking. Usually, she is. Linda is listening. Kinda. Mostly she’s trying to get out of her elaborate swim costume of a polka dot suit, leggings, black strapped cap and walking shoes. It’s an arduous process.

            “…. they don’t understand,” Alice continues. “I try to explain to them that the complaints aren’t real, that it’s AI, but I don’t think they get it. But what do I know. I’m retired!” She laughs heartily, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

            “What are the bots complaining about?” I ask, trying to get in on the conversation.

            “It’s about language,” Alice answers. “The syntax of a sentence….”

            The bot is complaining about grammar? I wonder. This makes no sense. Did I mishear? Did Alice mishear? I don’t understand. So, I try another tack.

            “You know a lot of languages, don’t you, Alice?”

            “Oh, yes,” she nods. “I took French in school and then I learned Spanish and Italian but I tell you Mandarin was the hardest!”

            “Oh, yeah,” I laugh, remembering my feeble attempts at learning Mandarin before I went to China and then while I was there. All I learned to say in Mandarin was the name of the university where I was teaching and “Do you have any broccoli?” for when I went out to eat.

            Now I tell the two women how I’m so bad at trying to learn Spanish even though I’ve been studying it for four years.

            “You could get a friend to practice with who knows the language,” Linda advises.

            “Oh, when I was trying to learn Mandarin, this is when VCRs were first coming out, I got Chinese soap operas and learned that way.”

            “I try watching Spanish soap operas,” I sigh, “but I don’t understand anything.”

            They both laugh sympathetically? Or no, not really. They don’t understand.

            Later outside the facility after showering and dressing, I’m chatting with LS and she’s telling me about someone named Rama or Majsua or hell I don’t know. She’s impressed with this person because he gives all of his wealth to charity rather than like in our culture it’s all about how much wealth you can amass for yourself.

            “What’s his name?” I ask her.

            She repeats it. But is still can’t grasp any of it. A huge cement mixer starts to back up in the parking lot, the noise of the truck grinding out any possibility of understanding what she’s saying.

            I don’t understand anything, I think. I don’t understand what the bots are complaining about on Next Door, I don’t understand Spanish, I don’t understand the story about the ancestor of Mohammed. And, I especially don’t understand what’s going on in the US right now. I read every day in the NYT about how Trump wants to move all the Palestinians out of Gaza and create a resort; how he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America; how he wants to deport all of the ‘illegal aliens’ out of the US; how he wants to increase tariffs so that all the goods from China, Mexico and Canada will end up being more expensive.

            I just don’t understand.

            And on a grander scale, I don’t understand how Trump is even president. How anyone voted for him. A rapist and a criminal and authoritarian psychopath.

            I just don’t understand.

            Now I think understanding is perhaps beside the point. I just need to understand how to get through my day, work my jobs, get out of bed, not scream at any idiots in the pool.

            Understanding has always been something I craved.

            Now I’m not so sure….

           

The Search

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh, I lost my goggles…” Melvin dives again under the lane lines, skimming close to the bottom of the pool, before popping up again. He tosses a pair of pink rimmed goggles on the deck.

I’m standing on the deck, dripping and ready to exit the natatorium.  Super Swimmer man in the lime green cap and turquoise swim trunks stands next to me. I’ve swam with him in my lane a few times. He’s okay to swim with except that he’s BIG. Tall, maybe over 6 feet, and muscular. His great white core barreling through the water.

Now he just stands and watches Melvin.

Nodding toward the discarded goggles, I ask, “Are those what you were looking for?”

“Not really,” Melvin shrugs before diving back under the water, swimming close the bottom of the pool again, heading out to the middle. He’s the Super Swimmer of the pool. Sleek and muscular, fast, and furious. A lifeguard and a manly man. If he can’t find what he’s looking for, who can? I muse.

I gather up my stuff and start down the cold hallway to the locker room. Lime Cap man shakes his head, then says to me: “Do we ever really find what we are looking for?”

He chuckles. Pleased with his joke. I stare at him, then shake my head. “Depends,” I say, but before I can elaborate, he’s gone, striding down the hallway, leaving big man wet footprints in his wake.

Later, at home now, dry and hungry, I muse about Lime Cap Man’s question. Do we ever really find what we are looking for?

I suppose first, you have to know what you’re looking for. If it’s a lost pair of goggles, then that’s rather straightforward. You either find them or you don’t. But what if it’s something more abstract?

Like the meaning of life?

Hell, I’m never gonna find that! Has anyone? Of course, it’s a question that people have been asking for eons: philosophers, artists, writers. Socrates. Thoreau. Rodin. It’s a search that is eternal. And unanswerable. At least as far as I can figure.

So, I’ll stick to more mundane searches.

Right now, I’m searching for ways to stay warm besides running the heat 24 hours a day, which frankly, I can’t afford.

So, I hunker under the electric blanket with the heating pad behind me. Grab the cat and place her strategically on my ice-cold feet. Sometimes she cooperates. Other times, she’s looking for something else.

Who the hell knows what that could be!

So far, finding warmth has eluded me. It’s just not possible. I think I ‘run’ cold anyway. I talk to people who tell me they are always hot. What would that be like? They never seem happy about it.

            And, I guess, just to end with the cliché. It’s this ‘happiness’ that we are all searching for, right? I do believe that I can find this. Though it is fleeting.

            In the pool. At the piano. Snuggling with the cat. Hanging out with Ian.

            The search, though, continues. I’m always looking for something.

            Will I find it?

            I hope not. Cuz without a quest for that elusive ‘something’ would we have any purpose at all?

            Something to ponder.

            I do wonder, though, if Melvin ever found his goggles. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him. That is, if I can remember. I'm still searching for my brain. 

    Always!

           

 

The Memo

 

“We got a memo from the administration yesterday,” Jess says, rubbing the shampoo into a soapy lather. She’s a fellow English instructor, teaching at a local community college. Often, we chat about teaching after our swims, in the shower or getting dressed.

            Now, I stand shivering under the hot stream of water. I just can’t get warm lately. It doesn’t matter how hot the shower is or how warm the pool water is, I’m always freezing!

            “…they said that if ICE comes into our classroom, we don’t have to cooperate with them.” Jess rinses the shampoo out of her hair, ducking under the shower head to keep from knocking into it.

            “WOW!” I shake my head, thinking how that didn’t take long. Trump was just sworn into office the day before. He didn’t waste any time, though, signing all those executive orders, this one Jess is referring to is about rounding up all the ‘illegal aliens’ and deporting them back to their home countries.

I can’t imagine what I’d do if I were teaching and ICE agents came barging into my classroom while I was giving a lecture on the writing process.  I would be terrified. Not to mention my students. Some of whom may not be in the country legally. Even if the administration said that I didn’t have to comply with ICE’s demands, what would I do?

             Jess turns off the shower, shakes her wet hair.

            “I mean, I guess it’s good that the administration is on top of it. I just can’t believe that you’d have to contend with this,” I say.

            She nods, “Yeah, well, this is what they’re gonna do. Go into college classrooms, churches, places of business.”

            Jess grabs her towel and begins to dry off. And I think, damn. Isn’t our job hard enough? Trying to teach writing to a group of students who may not know anything about it? The time in the classroom is so valuable. Do we, as instructors, really have to worry about ICE agents barreling into our classrooms? Demanding we hand over students? And then what? The instructor has to stand there and go against their commands? Are they going to just go away? Or will they arrest us? Throw us in jail? Prosecute us for noncompliance with federal agents? And will the administration do anything to support us?

            I can’t imagine. And, this is the kind of fear that instructors will have to contend with, especially those like Jess who are teaching in the community colleges. Sure, we live in California, in the Bay Area. Our politics, like these put forth by Jess’ administration, don’t support Trump and his draconian policies, yet…. will these politics protect us? Will someone like Jess really be able to tell ICE agents, “NO, you’re not taking any of my students. Get out of my classroom!”

            I turn off my own shower, grab my towel, still shivering. Is it from the cold air or the hostile environment of fear and threat that we are all going to be living under for the next four years?

            “Your leggings are so cute! Where did you get them?” one of the other women asks, the question echoing up and into the air.

            “Ross. They have the best selection.”

            “Really? I’ll have to check it out,”

            I unlock my locker, grabbing my clothes and begin pulling on my tank top, sweatshirt, sweaters, thinking how our lives will go on. These women aren’t thinking about Trump. They are thinking about where to buy their next pair of sweatpants.

            Maybe this is the answer? Just go on with our lives? Don’t think about it?

            I wish I could. But right now, I can’t. All I can do is think about Jess and her students and ICE agents barging into her classroom in the middle of a discussion of Langston Hughes.

            Jess is dressed and headed out the door now. “Pray for me,” she jokes, halfheartedly. 

            “I will!” I call after her.

            Standing at the mirror near the doorway, I finish brushing the tangles out of my wet hair, turn around and gather up all my stuff littered all over the wide wooden bench. 

            I shiver again. 

            Then head out the door, the wind whipping my wet hair into my eyes, the screech of a seagull circling overhead piercing the air.