The New year’s Dance. I haven’t been for many years, wanting to but encouraged to scoff at the whole hogmanay hangover/hair of the dog thing. But I did go, lifted by my kindly young neighbours and thus chaperoned and only for the Children Bit, 7-9pm. The hall was buzzing with families and those, like me, who tend towards early experiences, finiting them when the big people arrive with a long night on their minds. It was wonderful. For a while the music was disco, minus DJ and I watched the children, all fined up and flutey, the girls with sparkles and sass, the boys stuck to the walls, eyes on their shoes, the odd flicker of uplooking. I smiled at the memory of my own children at such events, way back way way back. Now I am a granny on the dance floor and don’t let anyone police me off it, oh no. I am here to boogie, to ceilidh, to absorb every single wonderful moment of freedom, not just from covid restrictions, but from life, from wife, from my children leaving, from explanations. I am aware I may well have looked like a right narnia, barefoot, dancing, as I did with another granny, a dear friend, another creative, a woman who knows what it is to have experienced the joys of gain, the pains of loss, her heart, like mine, a mosaic of cracks and craiks and smoothed over and over by her own hand, the crafter of renewal, of necessity. To be such a woman, any woman, is to learn that heart breaking is not a final act but a daily one, perhaps hourly, but nonetheless inevitable.

So we danced, we grannies, a lot. And when the ceilidh band, young men, arrived on stage, I played man to her woman and we swung and spun and giggled and bumped and it was perfect. The lights twinkled and the young, soon to be dragged home by parents for the 9pm curfew, danced faster and with wild enthusiasm. I watched their faces, caught their sparkles, saw the boys unglue from the walls as if they knew it was now or never, their pressed shirts and shone shoes a waste of effort if they didn’t just go for it, now, quick.

And then I caught sight of a young man, a friend of my eldest, a wide smile on his face. He lives away with his family, but he was here and this was now and, like the curfew children, I was leaving soon. Dance? I asked and he smiled his warmth, reaching out his arms in welcome. What is this dance? he asked. No idea, I replied (so many complicated island dances). The dancers formed a ring. Shall we middle it? I asked. Yesss! he said, and we did and the joy of dancing without knowing a single step with a young man who only had the jist of the dance was glorious. We spun and jigged, bounced and twirled and all the time he held me safe as we middled the whole wheel with absolutely no clue as to the regulation dance steps. It has been very many years since I felt that safe.

I would say, even at this late stage that I have only ever caught the jist of life, of living, not understanding most of it, and I am glad of it for life is a deep thing, and wide and way too much for resolving. But to recklessly dive into the middle of the dance of it is a glorious sparkly thing. It may not sort out heartbreak nor last into the next day but if I know I can take that barefoot step once, even at almost 70, then I can do it again, and, if I cannot, at least I did and only yesterday.