1-2-3-4 left feet. Pause.

After returning from New Orleans, Tim and I found a Zydeco dance workshop as part of the Folk Festival. Saturday morning, that’s where we were.

I do love to dance …

… as long as no choreography is involved. Once there are specific instructions – steps – there’s a problem. In high school, when we did calisthenics, the gym teacher would say, “Will someone take Barbara aside and work with her?” At theater auditions, I’d make it past the acting and the singing, but when the dancing happened, they’d all be stepping left, right, swing, turn, jump, spin, right, left … and I’d be stuck at “what comes after ‘left’?”

During the Jazzercise/aerobics craze of the ’80s, I did learn to do it. I got pretty good at it … as long as I did the same routine over and over again for months.

Even when I took up curling and had to slide with one foot while the other went down as I advanced with the stone, I would have to ask over and over before each turn, “Which foot slides when I put it down?” I’m sure there are people there who still wonder how I walk, period.

So the dancing that I love doing consists of hanging onto Tim’s neck during a slow dance (a la high school cafeteria) or moving to the beat of some Rolling Stones so that the beat makes it all happen without any steps, routines, or motor coordination. (I know people laugh at Elaine’s dancing on Seinfeld, but I’m not really sure what they’re laughing at.) Here’s a hint: the first dance I learned was The Freddie to Freddie & The Dreamers. Do you remember? It was so happy!

I met Tim, and he could dance with twirls where he spun me out and back. He even owned cowboy boots. I was very impressed. So years ago – maybe even before we were married – Tim and I took a swing dance class together. Turns out Tim wasn’t as talented as he’d impressed me, so Marlis, our instructor, tried to straighten us out with “slow-slow-quick-quick.” Class was an hour-and-a-half long, and I think one of our first arguments happened when, after 15 minutes, Tim said, “Okay, one-sixth done.”

Twenty some odd years go by. Lots of dancing, no steps. I dance with abandon and have such a wild time maybe people think it’s some sort of demonic possession rather than dancing. Tim twirls me out and back and there isn’t a slow-slow-quick-quick anywhere. Or rather, we always recite “slow-slow-quick-quick” while we do whatever we want. It’s our little joke.

Fast forward to last Saturday and the Zydeco dance workshop. It looked like it should be incredibly easy: “1-2-3-pause, 1-2-3 pause.” It’s a little unclear whether the foot stays in the air during the pause or comes down, but it sort of looks like shuffling so we’re maintaining. But then it gets complicated: one foot goes back while one goes out to the side. All in turn. Which turn? Which foot? Mirror image of each other or doing the same foot? Still with 1-2-3-pause? Or is now when we switch to “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8”? And we have to switch hand-holding position, too?!?

As Tim put it, we’re the ones who have trouble clapping along with any musician. We seem to catch it a half-clap behind. Dozens of couples moving around, and we’re mumbling “1-2-3-pause,” bumping into people. We lose the beat and just can’t find the “1-2-3,” let alone the pause. We’re marching to our own drummers, “1-2-pause,” “1-pause-2,” “1-2-3-4.” We’re so coordinated we can say “1-2-3-pause” and do “1-2-pause-3-pause” at the same time. Isn’t that an achievement?

Unfortunately, there are many more women than men so the pairs have to split up. Now we take our ineptitude to the population, like a contagion, a spreading virus. Each time we link back up, we share stories of dancers we have confused, bumped into, or sweat upon. Finally, three-fourths done, we escape. Every now and then, we say “1-2-3-pause” to each other and laugh.

Some New Things are just destined to be fodder for a funny story.

Tonight we’re trying Zumba.

The last vestige of teenage angst

This is how I know I’m in my Third Third: I wore my glasses out in public.

I didn’t explain it. I just showed up. No groveling about putting drops in my eyes and not being able to wear my contact lenses. No qualms beforehand about how I looked. No nervous skulking in the shadows hoping I wouldn’t be seen.

This is a far cry from the teenage Barbara who actually coined the term “Be Ugly Days” for the days when she didn’t put in her contacts and stayed in glasses all day. Granted, eyeglasses back then were a little weird. Funny little pointed things. I can’t remember if I still wore the ones with the silver speckles in the frame, the ones that earned the “Four Eyes” title. The day I got my contact lenses I was set free!

This is also a far cry from the Barbara who brought a DOME HAIR DRYER to college so she could sit under it with giant rollers and tame the frizz. And who wouldn’t answer any knocks to her freshman door until she was properly smoothened and out from under. Whose boyfriend never saw her without what he called her “finely lined” eyes. And he meant eyeliner, not crow’s feet.

There are two sides to this “not caring what you look like” issue. On the one hand, there’s the self-confidence and maturity that mean you’re not stressing and worrying over appearance. On the other, there’s the downhill-slide schtunk problem (which I’ve already clarified here) and my promise to stop wearing slogan T-shirts in public.

Actually, it’s not really a two-sides issue; it’s a continuum. At the far end – things I swear I will never do – is – oh, wait! I have worn sweat pants in public, but I was just on my way to the athletic club. And yes, I have gone out with dirty hair, but that was just for a run and I was going to shower afterwards. And I did spend the entire time in New Orleans in a bright blue “Anchorage Beautiful” slogan sweatshirt, but that was because it was unseasonably cold and I didn’t have any other layer. (Or rather, the other layer – a stylish gray jacket – well, that was too dressed up for just sightseeing, right? And this was a sweatshirt, not a T-shirt, so technically it wasn’t covered by my pronouncement.)

Maybe I need to be more specific: Today, I intentionally went out in public – expecting to be seen, interact, and socialize – with my glasses on. I wasn’t just slipping out on an errand hoping not to run into anyone on my route. I’ve done that before and it doesn’t count because I’d still feel compelled to explain if I did run into someone I knew. I’d still start fumbling around about drops in my eyes.

These drops in my eyes – it’s for five days. I had a little twinge about a social event on Saturday night, but that was about my vision, not about wearing glasses. I am in my Third Third; I don’t have to feel self-conscious about how I present myself in public!

But why is it I can imagine my daughter looking at me, her eyes sliding down my clothes, hair, giant pink sunglasses, and green-purple-pink felt hat, thinking, “You’ve been self-conscious about your appearance???”

Yes, I was a teenager. Now, in my Third Third, I’m not.

The Quest for New-ness #3

If I don’t want to get stale in my Third Third, I need newness. I need jolts and shake-ups. Actually, my whole life has been about wanting and liking jolts and shake-ups, but the difference is that now I feel I need them to ward off any encroaching stagnation. (We’re doing the difference between want and need in my literacy classes, can you tell?)

My friend Mark said I’m his friend with the longest same address and longest same phone number. That’s kind of frightening. So travel seems to be one way to add newness to my life.

I read somewhere that Americans are now putting shopping at the top of their list of travel pursuits. Shopping?!? And not even for local specialties or products, but for … T-shirts? Things they could find at home?! Not my idea of adding newness.

Even though we mostly travel to Central and South America, New Orleans was still a “push” for me. The things everyone talks about – food, drink, and music – are not so high on my list. As I get older, I’m noticing that alcohol doesn’t feel so good in my body. I made it through the holidays without gaining weight so why would I stuff myself on vacation? And music is tied up with either the piano lessons that gave me ulcers when I was 12 or dancing to the Rolling Stones, so I’m not very good at sitting and listening either.

Aiiiee, does this sound like someone in need of jolts and shake-ups or what? So how’d New Orleans hit me?

Well, I did discover that certain drinks are pretty easy on my system. Pat O’Brien’s Hurricanes, for example. Prude that I am, I usually frown on alcohol as some sort of anesthetizing that people shouldn’t be doing – and when I saw the debauchery on Bourbon Street, I went Temperance Union on myself – but it felt pretty good to get a little loopy in the sun. Call that a pleasant little jolt, a rolling, happy little jolt.

When we went to Antoine’s for lunch and they offer a maximum of three 25¢ cocktails, I thought, “Who’d ever have THREE?” Well, I loved those three Blue Bayous just fine. Tim’s father had served in World War II with an apprentice chef from Antoine’s so we were on a quest, but the Blue Bayous were a pleasant little addition.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have to talk about the food because everyone was right. I found my great gumbo place and we went back again. My jambalaya spot, too. Not to mention the beignets, which I still don’t understand because doesn’t everyone have state fairs with funnel cakes?

But it was the MUSIC! I couldn’t get over the fantastic musicians just setting up on street corners or in Jackson Square. I heard Doreen on clarinet like I never knew a clarinet could be played. And Wael and Anna on violins with baby Mia strapped to Wael’s back. I remembered their corners, sought them out, bought their CDs. I learned I like some jump to my jazz, but not so much brass that it sounds like a marching band.

We managed to find ourselves at the start of the Second Line in honor of David Bowie, which was a jam-packed, hilarious mess but if you’re on vacation, it’s an adventure. Later, we caught a wedding parade coming out of the cathedral. The band played as the bride and groom danced down the street, with the wedding party following in gowns with glasses of champagne. Tim and I had eloped. I told him if I’d known there was a way to get married like that, that’s what we would have done! I just kept imagining the in-laws realizing they weren’t in Kansas anymore.

So that’s the heart of it really: encountering a whole new way of doing things that never occurred to me before. That’s the kind of New Thing that lights up the corner of your brain that hadn’t imagined it, and travel is a spark to the whole power grid.

Now, as always, the question is how to keep that spark lit, how to create a Third Third life that reinvigorates and replenishes on a regular basis.

Do I drink to that?

How do you spell kindness?

You already know I love words, that I pronounce the words for the BizBee, the adult spelling bee. I used to pronounce the words for the kids’ Alaska State Spelling Bee, but mostly, I wish there were a happier alternative to kids’ spelling bees. It’s just so traumatic when there’s one winner and 200 “losers” who may be able to spell any other word than the one the luck of the draw dished out. And the kids cry.

So I always begin a bee by having the kids realize they got where they are because they were already good spellers, that no matter what happened, they wouldn’t be a “loser.” For the rest of their lives, people would always call out to them, “Hey, how do you spell _____?”

And then I tell each participant to turn to the person on his/her left and wish her good luck. Then turn to the right, and wish him good luck. Mostly, they think this is goofy, but if they think I’m goofy, they relax a little.

So today I was back volunteering for my friend, Dawn, pronouncing for her school’s spelling bee. It’s always a tightrope: do I have enough “easy” rounds so the kids can feel some satisfaction and accomplishment before going out, or do I risk taking too long and the bell rings and the buses are waiting? So sometime during the bee, before a new round, I have to jump ahead to harder words, and the kids drop like flies.

Which left just Michaela in the front row and a pack in the back row.

And then, when Michaela herself went out, the auditorium (which had been a miracle of quiet and attention) erupted in cheers for her as she left the stage.

“What grade are you in?” I asked the back row. “Fifth,” they all said.

“And Michaela?” “Third!” shouted the audience. Ah, I thought, she was the triumph of little kids over big kids. She’d hung on and all those third graders were rooting for her. She was theirs. But it was louder than that: the whole school knew this “little kid” had stood with the fifth graders.

Eventually it came down to three students: Angelica, Craig, and Sofia. After Angelica spelled out, I whispered to her to wait in the hall, that if the others misspelled, she’d be brought back in. When Craig spelled out, I told him the same thing.

But as Craig left the stage, he turned back towards Sofia and whispered, “Good luck!”

There. That’s it. That’s the reason for today’s post. My heart is happy.

Vietnam: It was "our" war

If we’re all in our Third Thirds, then Vietnam is a big part of our past. Whether we fought in it, fought against it, had brothers who did or didn’t, friends who did or didn’t; it haunted our lives for a time. And long afterwards, we lived with the decisions we’d made during that time.

Maybe it was a formative time in my life – high school and college. Maybe it was the combination of civil rights, feminism, and Woodstock, but I feel the Vietnam War helped make me into the person I am now.

Nevertheless, I seem to be visiting a lot of World War II museums lately. First Portland, now the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

I learned a ton of things I never knew. I hadn’t heard of Ruperts, dummy paratroopers that made the D-Day invasion look larger to the Germans. I hadn’t heard of Operation Bodyguard which was the giant deception plan to make the Germans think the invasion was going to be somewhere else, complete with inflatable tanks so they’d appear real to enemy aircraft. In the “Road to Tokyo” exhibit, I realized I knew not a bit about the geography, the islands, and where things were fought; it was all a big empty space in my brain.

But something is bothering me about all this. I’m going to bounce it around here so please help me out if you can clarify. When my book club read To End All Wars, we were blown away by what was happening on the home front during World War I. There were disagreements, raging controversy, political divisions. Big ones, like domestic war.

This is one of the things I got from the World War II Museum: it was won by America’s massive, unprecedented, and truly astonishing production. Planes, tanks, the invention of the Higgins boat right there in New Orleans. When I read about the HUGE load of materials needed overseas for D-Day – it took two years to accumulate it – I saw the enormity of the task.

Yes, the Museum had a Rosie the Riveter poster, but my own mother was an air raid warden, yet I’ve never seen that in a museum. I don’t even know how wartime rationing occurred in the U.S.: were there coupon books?

I know there’s a difference between risking your life and screwing in a bolt, but if everyone says that was a time when everyone pulled together, then where’s the “everyone”? Museums have gotten better in some things: there are panels about the highly decorated Japanese regiment and the Tuskegee Airmen and about how those soldiers came home to discrimination. There were photos of the liberation of the concentration camps … but no mention of the turning away of the St. Louis and its Jewish refugees.

I guess what I’m driving at is the messiness of war. We used to say the Vietnam War was fought in our living room. Uncles insisting their sons would go; sons planning moves to Canada. Families glued to television sets, waiting for lottery numbers to be drawn. Black armbands, marches, protests. “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” body bags, Agent Orange. Pentagon Papers. My Lai.

I don’t know if there’s a Vietnam War Museum in the works. Is it even possible to make a Vietnam War Museum? Would the fights about what goes in it be the same as those fights in the living rooms? Do we have to wait years and years to reflect on our history and does that tend to smooth it out, soften its edges? Give it a false nostalgia? Paint it with a “greatest generation” brush and erase any controversy?

In World War II museums, I’m shown patriotic movies that stir the soul, not Japanese internment camps, for example. I learn “how,” not “whether” (and I’ll grant the necessity of the war itself). But if the intent is to thank, isn’t that a war memorial, not a museum?

When I walked through the state museum exhibit about Hurricane Katrina, I saw the heroism of individuals, the supportiveness of community, the sheer glory and tenacity of human beings. But I also saw an indictment of political apathy and infighting; scathing rebukes of political deceit and negligence; rethinking of scientific policy. There was no dancing around the issues. I saw how things went bad, thought about how they could be improved.

A Vietnam War museum would have to be as tangled as the jungle, as angry as protesters, and as unsure as the newest recruit. Brave enough to look at the mistakes and damage, the heroism, sacrifices, and lessons. Inclusive enough to honor all viewpoints and to remember the home front, but sensitive enough to lead us to understanding. I’d spend days in a museum like that.

Shaking and quaking back home

The wonderful thing about travel is all the excitement that gets added to your life, and the wonderful thing about our Third Thirds is that we get to travel more.

So why was our wonderfully exciting trip to New Orleans so totally upstaged by an Alaska special as we landed back home? A special 7.1 shaker of an earthquake to be exact.

We were coming in from Seattle about 1:30 in the morning. I was wrecked, jet-lagged, tired, and the turbulence was rough. I was thinking how living in Alaska means you’re always flying home wrecked, jet-lagged, and tired. I hate turbulence. It’s just such a relief when we land on firm ground and taxi in.

Except then the plane went cockeyed. Bumping and wagging, flopping and bucking. It felt like it was jumping and kicking. I thought the pilot had a heart attack or something. And then he announced it was an earthquake. The airport had lost power so we couldn’t get the jetway hooked up and the door opened. So we sat.

When finally power came back, it was dark in the jetway so the pilot asked people to use their phones to light the way. I pulled out my trusty headlamp (so pleased it had a use other than not keeping Tim up when I read in bed).

At home, the parrot was on the floor. The wooden parrot. He sits atop the bookshelf and is our too-late warning system; when he falls, we’re in the middle of an earthquake. And all the kitchen drawers were open. But since I’m such an earthquake preparedness fanatic, all our shelves, water heater, etc etc are braced so we’re good. (Remember the Great Alaska ShakeOut?) But I’m sure we’ll be finding cracks and little relocations over the next day or so.

This trip to New Orleans was not a relocation reconnaissance trip; it was just a fun vacation. And I’ll tell you all about the fun, the music, the curiosities, the eye-openers. But it’s interesting what feelings the trip and the earthquake have left me with.

We spent time in the Louisiana State Museum’s terrific “Living with Hurricanes” exhibit in the Presbytère, and it convinced me I didn’t want to live with hurricanes. There were all sorts of facts like how Louisiana is losing a football field of protective wetlands every 90 minutes, and how people are realizing now that the flood control structures they put in place decades ago are the source of the problems today. While we were there, the river was 17 feet above normal, and it all seemed so unsustainable. And our river guide told us about having to strip his entire house in order to rebuild the drywall and there was just so much muck and devastation after Katrina.

And then, of course, the East Coast was just getting pounded by blizzards and they were folding up streets and transportation and battening down the hatches for the siege. I thought of our last trip to Colorado: Sophie’s iPhone interrupted our drive with a warning to take cover from a tornado expected in 8 minutes. All I could think was, I don’t want to die in a tornado.

I didn’t even need to hear our New Orleans river guide tell us that during the summer he has to change his shirt seven times in a day because of the humidity or how our B&B hostess rests after a shower so she doesn’t work up a sweat toweling off.

So there I was, reflecting on hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards for which people are unprepared (like lions and tigers and bears) … and then I land in the middle of an earthquake. And I’ll tell you I was … relieved! I was glad to get home to the place where snow isn’t an enemy, where we know just what to do with what Nature throws at us because this is what our Nature throws at us.

Is this just a really odd way to say “home sweet home” after a trip?

Stop! Do you see a pattern here?!

I’m leaving on vacation to New Orleans this week so I’ll be offline for about ten days. (Attention: thieves, burglars, and arsonists) But before I go, I’ll start by telling a little story from my second third.

A while after Tim and I were married, everything about him started irritating me. No, it was beyond irritation; it was the D-word. How had I gotten myself mixed up in this marriage thing? to him? Now I was just angry, full of regret, and searching for escape.

We went to a counselor. She asked if we were there to figure out how to separate or how to stay together. “Separate,” I said. We had a couple of visits and then had to take a break; we’d previously made plans for a trip to Mexico (when I still liked him), and we’d be away.

But after the trip, we never went back to her. Had no problems. Love was restored.

Just about a year later, our marriage was (in my opinion) back on the rocks. Any fix must have been temporary. This was a bleak story of a marriage that could not be saved. So we went back to the counselor. But again, we had to take a break for a previously planned trip to South America. True Alaskans, we always make sure to head to sunlight, sunshine, and warmth in the winter.

A little dose of light, and we canceled any future visits to the counselor. Life and love were good.

The next year, the counselor said, “Stop! Do you see a pattern here?! You always come to me the third week in January, and then you go to Central America in February. Why don’t you schedule your trip for the third week in January and then you might never have to see me?”

Worth her weight in gold that counselor! We made our light-seeking trips earlier – have done it ever since – and never saw her again. My mood stopped sinking as low as it did back then because now I knew what was going on. But even dawn simulation lights and other remedies just weren’t enough to keep me … pleasant. I needed my infusion of light to come from natural reality. Just earlier.

So, the marriage was preserved, and the lesson learned. Tim and I are leaving on vacation this third week in January. Oh, but this has been a snowless winter. There’s no snow to reflect back the minimal light we have, no snow to be out and about in. No cross-country skiing, no winter wonderland. It’s even hard to find addresses in the dark, to drive on certain roads. It is dark, dark, dark. Not even crisp and cold dark; it is soggy, wet, dingy dark. (Attention: tourists and visitors)

So I looked back on my last few posts, and I see the pattern there! All that moaning, all that doom and gloom. Depression and lethargy, DVD binges and sleep disturbances. In a snowless winter, I needed to be out of here earlier!

At least, by my Third Third, I’d learned it had nothing to do with my marriage. Thank heavens I wasn’t dragging us back to marriage counselors. Now, whether Tim might feel differently … hmmm, I’m not pushing my luck: he had to deal with that zombie on the couch, the voice from the abyss.

See you all in about ten days!