Family Vacation Tango

Tomorrow night I go to tango at the University of Michigan Monday Night Practica.

I am uncertain.

Not about my dancing.

Not about my shoes, even though they are falling to pieces. They will hold for another few hours--and I have my backup flats.

A little bit about what to wear. I have a dress, but it's cold here. I could wear my tough-grrrl power outfit, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. But we are not far from Motown, and someone might take me up on it and then I would fold.

Not about the directions and how to get to the "Pittsfield Grange," which I assume is some holdover from the Good Old Days, when the grange hall was where the farmers gathered in their Sunday best to dance to the music of fiddles and spoons.

Normally I would worry much about how to get to a new place. I get lost at the drop of a hat.

Not this time. I have a local driver. I think. At the moment, I have three. Tomorrow I could have a half-dozen, or none. This is how my family organizes things--like commodity traders in the pit. Right now, I am the ticket held aloft, and all the shouting surrounds me:

Ride, ride, she needs a ride!

I'll take her! No I have to get the dog groomed! She can borrow my car! No, don't let her drive, she always gets lost! I said I'd take her! Last week, you said no! You take her! No, you can't drive! Let Cx take her! She's only 17! (That's me shouting; last time Cx came to tango I sat next to her glowering at every man who threw an eye her way, as if I were her Sicilian grandmother.) I have to get the dog groomed! I could take you at 6 and you could take a book and read... and I could come back for you at 8. Will that work? Are there buses? The highway is under construction... Don't worry, One Heart, we have 20 hours, we'll figure it out!

Don't listen to any of this. I don't. I know how it works. There will be much fuss and bother and in the end, there will be a ride or there won't.

Right now the plan stands as this:

One-of-Six will take me. So will Cousin D. So will a woman I have only really met for the first time on this trip, another cousin's wife. They will meet at One-of-Six's house and carpool to Three-of-Six's house, where I am staying, and we will all go together, possibly with Three-of-Six too, if we can convince her to let go of her life for a night.

For them, it will be ladies night out. They will drink if there is a bar, and laugh loudly and possibly break into the U-M fight song as I dance by. These are the things my family does, the things I love about them. They are fearless, and they know how to take advantage of a good time when it is presented to them.

I will wear my floaty blue dress and my lovely, tattered Comme il Faut shoes, and the sparkly polish my niece wants to paint on my toes.

This is the plan. Don't get invested in it. I am not. At any point tomorrow, anything could change. In the end, this plan will pan out or another one will. This is my family.

Still, I will go practice now.