Christmas School! There are so many things to tell about that instead of trying to summarize, I’ll just give you the first and last days, which were pretty representative.

The first day I got up early. I had set the alarm for eight, but woke up around 7:25 when it was still dark and still in the house. I had breakfast and noodled around for an hour and a half, and then Mom took me up to the first class.

The classes were all in the Seabury Center, which is a big college building with two gyms and a bunch of classrooms. (Almost everything, you see, in Berea, KY is run by Berea College.) I’d been in there before, but somehow I got very lost and spent my first several minutes of Christmas School staring up at a balcony and wondering how on earth I was to get there.

I finally found the staircase and got to my first class. It was “Fun and Easy Contras”, which was fun, but probably a bit too easy for me. My first partner was a pink-faced man named George whose teeshirt proclaimed him “One Cool Grandpa”. Instead of a buzzstep or something for swings, he capered up and down while turning in a circle. It was rather funny.

There were more women than men in the class, so my next partner was an Englishwoman. All went well until halfway through the contra, when she disproved my stereotype that anyone from England was good at folkdancing. She went the wrong way entirely and began dancing with some man across the set, apparently unaware that anything was amiss. This left his partner and me both partnerless, gaping at each other and giggling as our former partners galloped down the hall. But we were only halfway though the dance, so I grabbed her and tried to catch up with the rest of the couples. The trouble was that both of us had been dancing the lady’s part, which led to great confusion as to who was now going to dance the man’s part. Whenever we met with another couple and were supposed to do a figure with them, there was a scramble to see who would get the man and who would have to be the man. We held a quick conference while dashing across the set and decided that she would take the man’s part, but this soon dissolved because she kept taking my part instead. “I don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl!” she wailed helplessly as we tried to sort out whose arms went where. This sent the whole side of the room into fits of laughter, making things even more confused. We bashed through it somehow and finished the dance. It was fun.

The next class wasn’t really a class at all, but 45 minutes when everyone gathered in the “parlor” – a large classroom – to share stories and music. There was a really excellent storyteller who told us about the days of big hair in Georgia, when her mother and grandmother would have their hair done on Saturdays at the beauty parlor and then spend the rest of the week preserving their hairdos. Another woman taught a round – “Rhythm and syncopaaaation! That is the true foundaaaaation of the rumba and the samba and the cha cha cha.” A pair of sisters played the banjo and the guitar and sang. Christmas School attracts such wonderful musicians that there’s never a shortage of good songs. I’m not usually too keen on banjos, but this one was good.

Next was beginning English Country Dance. I found it a lot like contra dancing, but subtler and more formal. “This is a very social dance!” the teacher was always shouting. “There is a lovely partner right across from you, Chad! Don’t be a wet noodle! This is a very sexy move. Make eye contact!”

Then was lunch, which I was supposed to have had with Marney Morrison, who was my adoptive mother for the week. I think she forgot, though, so I went back to Grandma’s house instead and ate with the family. The next class was Harmony Singing, which was taught by the two sisters with the banjo and guitar. Their voices were nice alone, but together they seemed to magnify each other and their harmony was just wonderful. They were only six or seven years older than me, and you could tell they had a lot of fun teaching together. They also taught my beginning clogging class, which was next. I didn’t pick things up as quickly as a lot of people in the class, but I survived all right. I’d seen my parents clog a little – they met in a clogging class – so I’d always wanted to learn how.

The last class of the day was my favorite – rapper. It’s a corruption of “rapier”, because it’s a sword dance done in sets of five people. The swords are actually flexible strips of steels with handles at either end. Each person in the set holds one end of a sword in either hand, so as the five people move around each other the five swords form all sorts of intricate figures. The end of a performance is usually when the swords form a five-pointed star, which the leader of the set holds aloft to much cheering and applause.

My set started out all teenaged girls, but it turned out that the teacher of the class was an advocate of mixed sets. This is a big topic of discussion in the folkdance world – should traditionally male dances stay male? Or should women be allowed to dance, but only separately? Or should the sets be mixed? Personally, I want to dance Morris and rapper, but I do like unmixed sets better. Anyway, the teacher thought it best to defy tradition and have only mixed sets, so he switched the last girl in our set for a boy in another. He was about thirteen, had dark hair and bushy eyebrows, mumbled to himself a lot, and kept waving his sword behind him while saying, “I’m a metronome!” The rest of us were in late high school or early college, blonde, and very definitely female. It was an amusing contrast. Eventually we got so we worked as a unit, like cells forming a single organism, and that was when it was really cool. Standing shoulder to shoulder and front to back, we were all so aware of each other that we didn’t even need to look at each other to know exactly what everyone was doing at any given moment. That’s what it should be like. That’s why I want to go back.

The teacher was adament that we all look macho. “This is a sword dance! I say anyone can dance it, man or woman, as long as they look like they’re about to go kill people!” So we all made an effort to look fierce and serious when we were dancing, but we kept slipping out of it when we had finished a figure. “Ouch!” “Catherine, I’m so sorry! Are you all right?” “Yeah, I just skinned my knuckle in that knot. Lauren, your hair smells really good.” “Really? . . .hey, it does! Thanks.” We later decided that our set motto was “We’re going off to kill people, but first we have to fix our hair.”

That was the last class of the day, so Dad picked me up and we went back to Grandma’s for dinner. She’s got this little 1960s house with a tiny kitchen and all sorts of carefully kept clutter.

After dinner was the contra dance, but you’ve had plenty of my talk about contras, so I won’t go into that. Then was Parlor, which was fun. There’s a bookshop set up in one of the racquetball courts selling Christmas school teeshirts and CDs of dance music and such. Every night the woman in charge of the bookshop would bring a selection of the goods to advertise. That night she brought out everything and then finished with a booklet on the history of Christmas School. “You may know the lady on the cover,” she said, holding it in the air. “And if you can find her this week, you can probably get her autograph.” At this, I thought It’s someone Mom knows. I’m sure it is. It’s one of those really famous ones she’s always telling me about. It’s probably Jean Ritchie or Ethyl Capps or . . .”

“It’s Cora Crandall!” said the woman happily. “Is she here tonight?”

“No,” I said, weakly.

“Oh, do you know her?” I’m not sure if she was joking. Like everyone else, she probably knew full well that Cora Wise, formerly Cora Crandall, was my mother. We sang a few more songs and then the woman who was leading Parlor announced that it was snowing. We finished our songs and went to the window, where the night was streaked with the falling snow. It seemed the perfect end to a lovely night.

It wasn’t the end, of course. In the hall afterwards, Marney found me and told me excitedly that Charlie was having a shapenote party that night. “You’ll come, won’t you?” I told her I would. The plan had been that if there was to be a party, I would call Mom from Seabury Center so she could come too. We had forgotten, though, that I didn’t know Grandma’s phone number. So Mom came to pick me up and we went over to Charlie’s. When we got there she borrowed Kent’s cell phone to tell Dad we wouldn’t be coming home until after midnight. (I think it’s so funny that this was her calling and not me. It’s total role reversal, and I love it.) Kent is the pastor at Union Church, which is the best church in the world. If I were within driving distance, I would go to church every Sunday just to hear him preach. He’s so wonderful.

Charlie and Teresa have a shop in Berea and live on the floor above it. Teresa, I think, is a potter, and Charlie is a woodworker. He specializes in Shaker boxes and furniture, so the shop and house above are filled with beautiful wooden chairs. To get to the house, you go around the side of the shop and there is a set of wooden stairs going up the side of the brick building. As you go up the stairs, there is every imaginable kind of windchime hung along the way. Some are wood, some metal, some made of seashells. Then at the top is a little porch and a glass door.

We went in and laid down our coats. The house was less like a house than one enormous room with a smaller rooms coming off of it at one end. At least half the space was an expanse of hardwood floor with furniture around the edges. Just in front of you as you walked in was a big abstract wooden sculpture suspended from the ceiling beams - parts were sawed and others left knotted and natural. To the left was a small loom and a woodstove. At the far end of the room was a sofa and a big window looking over the street. In the window was a stained glass of a tree with beautiful red apples. In the windows on either side of the door were stained glass hangings of a Shaker man and woman. (The best part was that the windows were done in accordance with Shaker beliefs – the man and woman were in separate windows and were separated by the door.) The ceiling was high and the beams exposed. Draped between the beams were lengths of transparent white cloth with Christmas lights behind them, so they shone through hazily. It was the most beautiful house I have seen in a long time.

In the center of the great room were rows of chairs arranged in a square, the rows facing each other. Mom and I joined the others who had come, although most people didn’t show up until later. I had never sung shapenote before, so Kent’s wife Jan gave me a quick runthrough. She’s a pale, thin woman with bushy red hair who always seems to be cold. “It’s like solfedge, but you only use four syllables. Instead of plain notes there are shapes. Circles are sol, like the sun. Triangles look like flags, so they’re fa. Rectangles are la because . . . well, they’re la. And diamonds are mi because diamonds are for me.”

Kent came over. “Rectangles are la because if you make L’s with your fingers (he did so) and put them together, they make a rectangle!” We all tried this. Most of us came up with a sort of triangle. “Anyway, it works for me.”

We all got shapenote books and started. Several people were beginners like me, but some knew the book so well they had the numbers of their favorite songs memorized. I don’t remember which ones we did, but they were all strange and beautiful. Some people didn’t sing, but stood around near the kitchen at the other end of the room and talked and ate. Every now and then when we were short on one part, we would coax one of them over for a song or two. “Hey Lin-Jye, we need you!”
“I’m eating.”
“We need a tenor!”
“I’m hungry.”
“We need a tenor!” He came.

Charlie was singing baritone, so at one point I ended up cattycorner from him. “So you’re Mace Crandall’s granddaughter?” he said. Charlie has a shaved head and a big black walrus moustache. His eyes are very dark and deep-set, so when he smiles all you can see are the crinkles around them and two little points of black. He was smiling now.
“Yes,” I said, a little surprised. I’m used to being identified as Cora’s daughter and occasionally as Dorothy’s granddaughter in Berea, but that was the first time I’d been Mace’s granddaughter. My grandfather died when I was little and hardly anyone talks about him much. He used to play organ for Union Church and do all sorts of odd things. He was a great storyteller and knew more jokes than anyone in town, but apparently he was very difficult to live with.

Charlie eyes crinkled deeper. “That’s a-okay with me. I admired him and Dorothy a lot.” We sang more songs, and more, with the Christmas lights always changing overhead. Yellow, green, blue, red. Running, then still, then off, then running. Kent led most of the songs, his tenor carrying clearly and his hand swinging to the rhythm. Around one o’clock Charlie began shooing us out, although he’s one who can stay up all night at a party. “We have a 9:00 class tomorrow,” he reminded.

So we trooped out again. Mom and I drove home in the snow and went to bed as quietly as possible. “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

The next days were much like it. On Friday Mom and Dad and Allison came to the contra and parlor. Mom was told several times that she was famous and was made to buy a copy of the booklet with her picture on it. “I look moony,” was her only comment. She and one of her friends from high school sang a duet, a ballad which Owen classified as “one of the good gory ones.” (It wasn’t a really good one in my opinion, containing no good dialogue or jealous lovers.) Friday night we went to the party at the Whites’ house, which wasn’t much fun. It was so packed that there was only room for about three people to dance at any given time. The rest of us stood around and watched the musicians. Dad counted seven fiddles, which was more than we’d ever seen play at once. Saturday I skipped the round party and finally got a full night’s sleep.

Sunday was church. “We’ve always had freedom of religion here in Berea,” as Pat Napier put it, “but we never claimed to have freedom from it.” In the old days they didn’t even dance on Sunday if it fell during Christmas School, but now we just shorten the classes so there’s time to go to church. Pat was preaching at the Methodist church out of town, but we went to Union. I was ready to leave for church before anyone else and got so frustrated at their slowness that I set out walking. Everything in the older district of Berea – the library, hotel, college, church, and some of the shops – is within walking distance of Grandma’s house, so I made good time. When I came in, Kent was leading hymns. After we finished “Brightest and Best,” Kent looked at his and said, “We’ve got a few minutes. Anybody have one they want to sing?” Someone called out “163,” and so we sang “In the Bleak Midwinter.” It was just like a larger version of Charlie’s party.

I like Kent’s views on religion so much because he doesn’t keep it reserved to church. Most people, myself included, have a gap between what they believe religiously and their lives. I don’t think he does, though. He doesn’t change at all when he puts on the vestments. One evening before Parlor I heard him talking with a woman. “Christmas is just overwhelming sometimes,” she was saying. “When I went to church three times in two days, that just seemed like too much.” Kent laughed. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “that’s too much.” People wouldn’t dare to say that to most pastors, but she knew perfectly well Kent would be okay with it. And he wasn’t just saying it because they weren’t in church at the time – he would have reacted the same way if the conversation had taken place in the sanctuary of Union. I would to have that kind of strength of belief, to see God everywhere. I’m sure Kent’s not perfect, but I admire him a lot.

The flip side of that is that he doesn’t restrict church to classically defined religion. The sermon, it being the week after Christmas, was on the murder of the Holy Innocents and the flight of the Holy Family. He talked about how everybody likes Christmas, likes the warm fluffy parts of it. We like shepherds and stars and angels. But the part we ignore is that after the birth, Herod comes in and murders all the young children in Bethlehem. It was only by divine providence that the Holy Family got out. “They probably used every bit of that gold, frankincense, and myrrh to pay for their journey and bribe officials to let them into Egypt.” Then he tied that into refugees today, all these thousands of Holy Families fleeing from Africa or Russia or Afghanistan. And there are thousands of Holy Innocents dying all the time, killed in one war or another. I forget what point he made with all of this, but I was really impressed that he could make the ugly parts of the Christmas story tie into the ugly parts of life today.

Then the two sisters who taught my clogging class and one of the musicians from my English class sang "Swimming to the Other Side." I ended up writing an anthology entry about that, so I won't talk about that any more.

The last day was New Year’s Eve. The contra class was a little more together than usual. At the end of class we had a waltz to “Speed Bonny Boat,” which was fun. My partner was a very gangly, very tall boy a little older than me. He wasn’t a very good waltzer, but he was a good learner, and that made it fun. I think he was distantly related to the Ritchies, too. The Ritchies are a sort of dynasty in that part of Kentucky. She taught some of the classes my mother was in when she went to Christmas School, and Mom always used to sing the Bluebird Song to us when we were little to make us go to sleep. I didn’t realize how much of an impact Jean had in the world outside that area until we saw her with some other people one time in a restaurant in Berea. My mother’s eyes got wide and she whispered to us who it was. We were just about to leave when they came in, but Mama made us all wait until Jean had ordered so she could talk to her without interrupting her. When the waiter took their orders and Mom finally went over, she was like a little girl meeting a very important person. I’d never seen her like that before.

So anyway, the Ritchies are very well-known in those parts. The woman who ran parlor was a niece of Jean and Edna. The booklet on the history of Christmas School was full of Ritchies and Ramseys, the other big Berea family. The Ritchies gravitate more toward music, though, and the Ramseys toward dance. I predict that someday the Morrisons will hold a similar status.

The English Country Dance class was largely spent on Selenger’s Round, also called The Beginning of the World, which is always the first dance of the New Year. Most of those dances are done in long lines, but this one is in a circle. “I want you to think of it as a magic circle!” said Mary, the teacher. She was a motherly person who got very excited about this topic. “When you stand in this circle, you should feel the energy of every person in the room flowing through you!” We tried this. She wasn’t satisfied. “I want you to pretend,” she said, her eyes glowing, “that there’s an ancient oak tree in the center of this circle! You are Druids, worshiping the power of this magnificent oak! And when you go up into the middle – dum da dum de dum (she danced into the middle) – you should feel the life force of the tree and the circle through your hands!” I love Mary. She’s terrific.

Then was lunch. Marney had finally arranged to have lunch with my rapper set and me at the Coffee & Tea, but it turned out that all the other girls were going to the pizzeria instead. “Oh, come on, mom!” said Claire. “She doesn’t want to go with you! She wants to go with us!” Marney agreed, and so I went with them. After some confusion as to where everyone was, we finally all met at the pizzeria and got lunch. In addition to Claire and the rapper set, there were some other kids from the Berea Country Dancers. I still didn’t know most of them, so it was a good chance to figure out who everyone was. We ended up discussing garlic sauce and why we were never going to get divorced.

Harmony Singing was mostly focused on the banquet that night, where we would be performing. So was clogging, although that was for the Morris Tour that afternoon. Those classes were pretty laid back, but rapper was a mad dash to get all the problems worked out in time. We did, and after that was the Morris Tour. The rapper class was supposed to wear the darkest pants we had and the lightest shirt we had, so the effect was varied. The girls in our set all wore dark jeans or black pants and white shirts (although Lauren’s was a wifebeater.) But the boy, thinking there would be time to go back home between class and the tour, was wearing a dark green teeshirt. He got all worried about this, but I thought it was very funny. It must have made the set look even odder. I can’t wait to see the pictures.

We got our swords and all went up to the gym, where we were first on. The Morris Tour is a sort of showcase of all the classes that did performance dances, plus the Mummer’s Play. The rapper went well, although our set got a few beats behind on the jump-set thing. It’s cool – three of the people stand in a line with the other two behind them. On the third beat, the three drop to the floor and hold their swords low, while the two hop over them. They step for four, then do the same thing backwards and switch places, so the others get to jump. We didn’t trip or drop our swords or anything, and at the end we made a perfect star. It was wonderful.

Then a lot of other classes performed – intermediate rapper, longsword, garland Morris, Ontario stepdancing, my clogging class, two Morris classes, and some Molly dancers. Most of them were girls, which in my opinion is against the nature of Molly dancing, since it’s usually men dressed as old women. The idea, I think, is to incorperate as many different floral patterns and frilly aprons into the costume as possible and then caper around madly. But they were good, and certainly did the capering part madly enough. The boys of the Country Dancers, which my mother used to be part of, even did Leapfrog. I know there’s a more proper name for the dance, but I don’t remember it. They stride around in a circle singing a song, then dance some, and then every time after that they do some sort of really difficult caper. Mom said they did it really badly, but I didn’t notice. I was mostly too busy hiding behind Pat Napier, since Leapfrog is one where a female is usually abducted from the audience and kissed by every dancer. This a terrifying thought, since I was sitting near the front, but in the end nobody was chosen. Bluemont did that dance at Jessica Bearman’s wedding, and she was the one. It was wonderful. Albemarle did it at last year’s Easter Ale, too. A lot of them kiss her hand with much flourishing and bowing, but the braver ones give her a peck on the cheek. It’s very amusing, provided the queen of the dance takes it well.

My parents got there late and missed most of it, as they have for almost every performance of mine or my sister’s I can remember. And so we went back to Grandma’s afterward and I got changed for the banquet. I wasn’t originally going to go to the banquet, since I could have dinner and home instead. But the day of, Marney told me she somehow had an extra ticket and would I like to go? Come on, Julia, you have to go. You can sit with us. So I took it.

The banquet was on the bottom floor of the college food service building. I got there a little late and had to pile my coat on a big stack of coats and accordion and fiddle cases. Downstairs, it was beautiful. It looked like one of those restaurants people in movies get engaged or break up in. I’d never seen anything so formal. There were lots of long tables with candles in glass vases up and down them. They were all laid out with salad, ice water, and too many utensils. A lot of people were wearing their nicest dancing clothes, but some got really fancy. Kent was in a tuxedo, which I’ve only ever seen at weddings, and Jan in an evening gown.

It was so dim I had to go meandering around to find them. Eventually Owen or somebody spotted me and flagged me down. Marney, organized for once, had saved me a seat. Everyone at the table was either a Morrison or somehow related to one: There was Jim, Marney, Marney’s sister Ellie, Ellie’s husband, Ellie’s son, me (her daughter for the week,) Owen, Owen’s sweetheart Dawn, Dawn’s sister Jacqueline, Claire, Will. Will is the oldest one.

So we ate our salads and talked about the week and about which fork to use. I knew perfectly well the salad fork is the outermost left one, but it being college food service, there was only one kind of fork available. So instead of salad, dinner, and dessert forks, there were just three dinner forks. It was sort of funny.

The rest of dinner was a sort of buffet, to appease the rather finicky tastes of dancers. Owen and Jacqueline said they were glad there was no hopping john and cabbage this year, but I missed it. It was the first time I could remember having New Year’s Eve with no hopping john and cabbage for good luck. (It seems that most people don’t even have hopping john. It’s black-eyed peas and rice.)

After dessert, the performances began. A recorder group played some madrigals and there might have been a harp or something. Then our Harmony Singing class got up and did “Freedom is Coming”, a really cool South African freedom song, and “Swimming to the Other Side.” And some other people sang and played, and then someone turned the lights off. All that were left were the candles and these eerie sconces on the wall that had been glowing blue all the while. Claire blew out our candle. I realized later that most of the people in the room knew just what was coming next, but I had no idea.

The room became perfectly silent. Normally in a big room there is a tiny amount of shuffling or whispering or adjusting of chairs, but here it was so still you would have thought us all under an enchantment. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I started noticing vague shapes outside the big windows on one side of the wall. I didn’t know if there were dancers out there or local teenagers making trouble, or what. Whoever they were, they carried no lights.

Then, on the edge of hearing, the sound of a ghostly music came into the room. The moving shapes outside the window grew closer and the music grew a little louder. Now I could tell it was a saxophone playing a very eerie tune very softly. And the door opened, and the dancers came in. They were masked and carried sets of deer antlers above their heads. Slowly, almost silently, they formed two lines and began the dance. The lines advanced toward each other and backed away again, the antlers raising and lowering ponderously. I cannot convey the feeling of that dance. Perhaps I will never again see it in the same way, since I now know what’s coming. But it was the most beautiful and terrible thing I saw that week.

The dancers continued through the room very slowly and out the other side, until we could no longer see the swaying horns or hear the saxophone. We all finished the last bits of cake and ice water, then started drifting upstairs. I was still half entranced, like the time I saw 2010: Odyssey Two and couldn’t speak for twenty minutes afterwards. We got our coats and went out into the night. I walked with Mary, who taught English Country Dance, across the street and the frosty grass to Seabury Center.

There was the dance then, the last one of the year. There were quite a variety of people there: my parents and my sister, locals who didn’t want to miss the fun, and everyone from Christmas School. Several women were wearing beautiful satin evening gowns. There was Kent in his tux and a man with a green velvet waistcoat. Most beautiful of all was a naval officer wearing a white dress uniform, with epaulettes and everything. (There was also a rather freaky guy wearing a dirty teeshirt bearing the words “Fat Freddy’s Barbeque” and a picture of someone I can only assume was Freddy. So we weren’t all pristine.) I had borrowed Mom’s swirly skirt with the green leaves and pink and gold roses. It’s like wearing a garden.

Coming at just the right time to rescue me from a dance with a scary old guy with stringy hair was the Mummer’s Play. It’s the traditional English play with a considerable twist. Last year, during all the election hoopla, St. George was St. George W. This year he was St. Georgina, played by the girl who led my rapper set. She was slain by the Turk, as usual, and revived by the Doctor using a can of AquaNet hairspray. A dragon kept edging in, saying, “In come I, the dragon fierce . . .”, but the cast always turned to shout, “There’s no dragon in this play!” Then he would look disappointed and retreat to the edge of the gym, only to come back a minute later. It was wonderful.

Then the dancing started again, and at nine o’clock the bidding on the silent auction stopped. People had donated dance shoes and hand-knitted scarves and wood carvings and such. The money raised goes for scholarships to Christmas School for next year. I donated a bag I wove on a picture frame last February. It being February and me having a lot of pink and red yarn, it came out rather Valeniney. I knew I’d never use it, so I gave it to the auction and it sold for $26. I was very proud.

Around ten, the last parlor started. It was extra long because people who hadn’t got their nerve up to perform until then suddenly realized this was the last one. And Patty spoke the words I’d been dreaming about for years: “Well, I guess it’s time to go dance in the New Year!” The only other time I had heard them was three years ago, when Mom and Dad decided to go home at 11:40. I had been crushed, and had been waiting ever since to spend midnight on the dance floor instead of my grandmother’s tiny kitchen, drinking ginger ale from a coffee mug. What would Selenger’s Round be like with so many people? I wondered. Who would I dance with? Throughout the week I had been dancing with anyone who asked me, but I resolved to bring in the new year with someone interesting. Someone who could dance well. Someone, preferably, younger than forty.

As we came out, I heard music growing steadily from behind me. A mob of singers, Kent Gilbert in the lead, had formed and was having forth with “Green Grow the Rushes.” I joined them, and we proceeded into the gym, singing it as loudly as possible. I think we rather annoyed some people who wanted to dance, since the crowd eventually got so loud and numerous that they couldn’t start the contra until we finished. But we did finish, and all was well.

So we danced even more, English Country and contra and dances with songs to go with them. I even had one with the Naval officer, which was quite enjoyable. And I somehow didn’t think anything of it when Pat Napier said he was going to call a circle dance next. So when George asked me for the next dance, George of the “One Cool Grandpa” teeshirt, I accepted unthinkingly.

So we had a circle dance, made doubly frustrating by George’s two left feet and the fact that Pat Napier is a terrible caller. He’s got a thick mountain accent, which isn’t so bad until you pair it with his floppy jowls and a microphone. The result is: “Nd brur’ur t’yr lrf! Ps rahd shulur w’r oppsit’n swin ur parur!” We were at the back of the gym, and were left making helpless gestures at the other couples, unable to understand any of what we were supposed to be doing.

A feeling of horror came over me when Pat said something vague into the microphone and people began counting. “10, 9, 8 - ” I looked at the clock. It was, indeed, almost midnight. “7, 6, 5, 4 - ” My Cinderella parallels were crashing down around my ears. I would not be turned into a servant girl when the gym clock struck twelve, but I would have to dance Selenger’s Round with George. “3! 2! 1! Happy New Year!”

So we all stood in a circle, even those who couldn’t dance, and sang “Auld Lang Syne.” Even Hazel White, who only walks with crutches, was brought into the circle and held hands with the rest of us. And watching her stand there, singing with all the dancers she’s watched from the side of the gym her whole life, was beautiful. Selenger’s Round was not.

As the dance went on, as George grinned happily and trod on my toes, my mood grew blacker and blacker. Usually I hide this very well, but I didn’t keep my lid on this time. I didn’t get any ruder than “You’re going the wrong way,” though, and I don’t think he noticed how irritated I was. After Selenger’s Round, everyone kissed everyone and went around finding their friends to hug them and wish them a happy new year. Some of the older girls had put on massive amounts of lipstick and were having a good time leaving lip prints on everyone in sight. I watched Claire get wrestled to the ground and forcibly kissed, which was quite amusing, but the rest of the dance wasn’t much fun. With very tired feet, far too little sleep, and the disappointment of a really terrible first dance, I was not a happy camper. This was compounded when a few dances later, I got a squeezer. There's almost nothing worse at a contra dance than a man who crushes my hand, because afterward no one can take my hand without bringing the constricted feeling back, and it annoys me to no end. By the time they declared the dance over, about 12:45, I had decided not to go to the afterparty at Charlie’s. I said goodbye to Claire, who yelled at me for not going to the party and told me I absolutely had to come back next year.

Driving back to Grandma's, Allison asked if she could go to Charlie's. "Sure," said Mom. "We'll take Julia home and we'll go on to the party." That was the last straw. Now I had to come. And so we all went down to Charlie's, where things were mostly pretty quiet. There was a little bonfire built in a charcoal grill on the porch just outside the door. Inside, the Navy guy was there, scratching Teresa's dog behind the ears and discussing art with Lin-Jye. People were rocking on the sofa, to which Charlie had attatched chair rockers. A boy from my English class was playing drums in the corner. I made friends with the dog and waited for things to get more interesting.

Eventually they did, as more people arrived. I heard a familiar "shuffle-step rock step, shuffle-step rock step, shuffle-step rock step jump and step!" and followed the voices to find my rapper set. They were trying out some of the clogging we'd learned, and I joined in. We were just shuffling in our sock feet, doing whatever felt good. Some of the girls from the Berea Country Dancers went through a routine, and then the beginners went through ours. (It turns out sock feet work really well for some of that stuff.)

Then other people started joining in - my parents tried the routine out and the boy on the drum set started jamming along with us. My parents eventually gave up on the routine, laughing and stumbling like teenagers, but they showed us a couple of moves we hadn't learned yet.

January 3
January 27