‘Laugh all you want,’ Peggy says. ‘When I tell you what we will be doing you might be wishing we handed round the mirrors and the strimmers after all.’
Niamh and I look at each other, fear on our faces. What could be worse than such an intimate level of self-inspection?
The answer, it seems, as Peggy lifts a box of coloured scarves onto a table at the back of the room, instructing us to go and take two each from the box, is dancing.
Dancing and I are not good friends. I’ve never been blessed with a good sense of rhythm. Mum tried to take me to Irish dancing classes when I was five or six. As legend tells it, I survived all of two lessons before the teacher very gently took my mother aside and suggested she may want to look at speech and drama lessons instead.
As I have aged, I have been known to substitute skill with enthusiasm and I do enjoy a good bop around the kitchen. But dancing, with scarves, in a well-lit, populated setting, without the assistance of alcohol to make me think I could be the next Beyoncé, is not something that generally floats my boat.
Still, in the spirit of writing this article as authentically as possible, I know that I should, and I will go along with it. Looking across at Niamh, I can see that if I’m feeling uncomfortable at the thought of dancing in front of other people and waving scarves around, she is positively wanting to crawl inside her own body and die.
Laura, funnily enough, has practically elbowed her way to the front of the queue and has already selected her scarves and is waving them around as if she’s directing the traffic at Belfast City Airport.
‘I’m not sure about this,’ Deirdre says. ‘I’m not much of a dancer. Two left feet, and neither of them good for anything.’
‘Listen, I’m the same if not worse,’ I tell her. ‘Niamh’s not a bad mover – or she wasn’t before her left knee started playing up. Laura there did ballet for two years in primary school and thinks she’s Darcey Bussell, but I can assure you that she isn’t. All three of us do a mean Macarena though, so how about we put that energy into it?’
Deirdre laughs and nods – and I even manage to feel a whole lot better about what we are about to do.
Peggy dims the lights and I immediately feel more relaxed and then, just as with this morning’s meditation, she guides us through a movement class where we start slowly at first, swaying to and fro with our eyes closed. It reminds me of when the boys were little and I would spend endless hours rocking them to try and settle them down, and ease their colic. It’s astounding how much of a muscle memory that becomes. I could almost be in their bedroom, ‘The Blower’s Daughter’ by Damien Rice playing softly in the background. Even as babies, Simon insisted that they would be introduced to the classics instead of nursery rhymes. My children were raised to a soundtrack of angsty singer-songwriters.
There is something about this gentle swaying that evokes those feelings of motherhood. Of youth. Of fertility. Of nurturing. I want to keep my arms wrapped around my centre and hold that part of me inside, stop it from moving on from where it has been such a huge part of my last two decades. I am not ready to let it fly or accept that the young mother version of me is no more. Or that the new generation of us is getting ready to embrace that stage themselves.
But as Peggy talks and encourages small movements at first – the extension of our arms away from our bodies inch by inch, turning slowly in a circle, throwing our heads back, reaching upwards – once again taking ownership of each part of our bodies and our souls, my fears lessen.
The movements become bigger. The music becomes louder. The rain starts to fall heavier outside, beating off the roof, adding a percussion to our movement. I swear I feel it in my very soul. The scarves become an extension of our arms, and those parts of me that I have been holding so very tight to all these years seem to move and change. They adapt to fit the person I am now. It’s as if they change colour and shape, as the energy within shifts and swells.
This is a dance shared by the woman I am now and the woman I am becoming.
Before I know it, I’m dancing and crying and thinking that I didn’t need aGPStracker after all to locate my inner goddess. She was always here. She was just hiding.
28
TRAINERS, SLIPPERS AND CROCS, OH MY!
‘I am absolutely pooped,’ Laura says, flopping down on the sofa bed. ‘Between the sea air and all this activity my body doesn’t know what’s hit it.’
I know exactly what she means. I ache in places I forgot I had. My skin feels scrubbed raw by the salty sea water. My soul feels scrubbed raw by all the introspection. My face is windblown. My arms ache from all the scarf waving and goddess finding. I could lie down right now on this bed and be asleep within seconds. I don’t even think I’d have to close my eyes before unconsciousness took over. In fact, I’m that tired I’m not actually sure if I’m awake at all right now and not just dreaming all of this.
‘Well, you girls better get a Red Bull or something down your neck because the night is young and you absolutely cannot nope out of the silent disco,’ Niamh says, searching through her weekend bag until she finds her ‘All Panic, No Disco’ T-shirt. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this in the way you complete madzers had been looking forward to the sea swimming and the goddess hunting, and if I had to do those for you, then you have to do this for me.’
I groan. My feet cramp in protest. ‘Really? But I’m tired! Surely you can just pop in your earbuds and dance here? Laura and I will sleep and you can go for your life.’
It’s always worth testing the waters with Niamh. There’s always the chance she’ll surprise you. For example, she could just as easily turn around now and say, ‘You know what? I never thought of that! By jiminy, I think I’ll give that a go and have a jolly good time!’
Of course, that’s not what she says. ‘You owe me. You made me worry about whether or not I was going to have to flash my fandango…’
‘Vulva!’ Laura says, in her best teasing voice, hoisting Niamh by her own petard. ‘Mrs Cassidy, you’re a science teacher, you should be using the proper anatomical terms!’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Niamh replies. ‘I’m sorry. I should be using the correct anatomical terms and I will do so going forward. So when I tell you that you are risking a kick up the rectum, you’ll know exactly what I mean!’ She sticks her tongue out, thankfully proving she is only teasing too and I’m not going to have pull them apart from a cat fight in the very near future.
‘But that aside – girls, come on!’ Niamh pleads. ‘It’s Saturday night. I have my disco T-shirt. There are no children nearby. No adult responsibilities. There’s just the chance to let our hair down a little and enjoy the silent disco. I’ve always wanted to try one!’
The concept is fun, I suppose. Everyone wearing earphones, simultaneously listening to the same music and having a boogie. Or if the playlist isn’t to your liking, you press a button and move on to something else. They could be breaking it down to ‘Bootylicious’ while you are enjoying the Nolan Sisters sing about being in the mood for dancing, and nobody needs to know.
Everyone’s happy. The neighbours – in this case the sheep in the nearby field – aren’t troubled by noise pollution and you get to dance without judgement. What could be better than that?
Except some sleep, I suppose.
