When I volunteered to work the Tango Colorado’s Christmas Party, the Snowball, they told me to wear silver and white.
Janice asked if I wanted to be a sexy, personable elf. Then I could wear a silly hat, too.
I am not sexy and I don’t like people, I told her.
Elizabeth offered me the role of elegant ice princess.
Hence the dress.
* * *
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that ever happened is happening now. All that was, is still. George Washington and his men at Valley Forge, Mother Teresa, Zeus. All present, all now.
How else that I can come home from tango, collapse on the couch, and still be dancing with a favorite lead? How else that I can feel the movement in my lungs and throat, feel my heart giddy, as I’m singing with Barbara? How else that I can be at rest in Lost Park with Keith, or at the beach on the brink of midnight with Michigan?
Keith likes to camp. He likes it because it is fun while it lasts and because he can relive the moments when his job gets boring. That’s what he calls it—reliving—because he is caught in the corporeal-temporal continuum.
My father and I are not saying corporeal time doesn’t exist. Night wears on. We are only saying that the linearity of time is a construct.
This is hard to explain. Back up and try again. Like rocking a car on ice.
Time and spirit exist in the ether. When they come to Earth, they must be “made flesh.” That is, they must be organized into corporeal units. Spirit is organized into people, time into moments. But while on Earth they take these forms, on the ethereal plane they continue to exist in their original state.
We experience time and people in the corporeal way. But the limits of our experience do not negate the ethereal existence of time and spirit.
What are creation stories but accounts of how the ethereal is reorganized into the material? One popular story describes how time was made sequential: He called the day day and the night night, and there was morning and evening on the first day.
Yes, this is becoming much more clear!
I would back up and try again, but at some point you have to admit the car is stuck.
* * *
Now my dad is old. Now my dad is sitting with me and my sisters as we read the parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I am so young I have to sound out the words; sibling Five-of-Six is so young she’s left out. (Six-of-Six has not been organized into a human unit yet.) We are all doing all that right this minute. Barbara right this minute is banging on her car with a stick because it won’t start. She is laughing maniacally. She is telling me I have fallen in love with Michigan before I actually have. Now I am in love with Michigan, now I love him dearly, now we are dear old friends. Right this minute is the night I discovered Walt Whitman. I am reading aloud, reading to the ethereal Walt, until the corporeal restakes its claim and dawn breaks:
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
* * *
I am twirling before my father, showing off my gown before I hem it up.
It would not be wise for me to dance in a floor-length gown. I would catch my heel in the hem. Best case, I would tear it. Worst case, I would take us down, the lead and I and possibly a passer-by, too. I am that much a clutz.
It’s a beautiful gown, but it will also be beautiful at cocktail length. I must hem it up, or I won’t be able to dance at the Snowball.
He is looking at me as a father might look at a daughter going to the prom. A little wonder, a little surprise, at this glimpse of a part of me he has suspected but never seen. Also, he loves the gown.
“That’s one of the few floor-length dresses I’ve seen that I like,” he says.
“Thanks a lot,” my mother says. “What about my gowns?”
* * *
My father is getting on in years. I spend lots of time with him now.
Why? If it’s all the ethereal Big Now, why bother?
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that has happened is happening still.
The key word is happened. My father and I don’t argue with the idea that, for experience to exist, it has to have happened. We only deny that it stops. Everything that has happened is happening still.
Whatever happens now, will keep on happening. I want lots of experiences to happen with my dad and me, so when our paths part we will always have that.
I know this for a fact: Earth is a corporeal game. The spirit, when it’s on Earth, has to play by corporeal rules. When spirits leave Earth, they exit the corporeal. The opportunity to create new experiences with them comes to a dead end.
* * *
My father is sitting under a blanket, shivering. He had chemo today.
He is admiring my gown. He is admiring my gown forever.
There is no way I am hemming this dress.
.
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