Bellydancing is a fact of my life. It is not a fad, not to be put aside like some of my other pursuits; beach glass mosaics, speed-walking or calligraphy. I can turn my head away for a little while, but somewhere a string of music or a rhythm always catches me. The dance troupe that I've ingratiated myself with is real. As much as I try to fade to the back of the room to observe the pretty young women with bendy bodies, I cannot ignore that I'm taking up space in this room. My body moves, not like a seventeen year old, but it moves. It wants to dance too, heavy and swollen, but with hips that remember. I can summon the zills heavy rhythms in silence. My hips pop, my arms swim, my chest drops. We rehearsed khaleegy yesterday, and I didn't even have to think about how I would drop to my knees. My brain didn't think creaky knees, it just went down. My hair swirled. I'm not here by mistake. Every flaw my body carries is part of my dancing. I am a dancer.

I went away to a cottage this weekend for two days of summer and swimming. We pretended as best we could that it was warm, but here is a picture of me wearing fleece warmups while drinking my morning coffee and knitting. The ghost of Daddy was close by when I did the "e-e-e-e-ah-ah-ah" cry before submerging in still northern lake waters. When we used to sail with my Dad on Lake Champlain in Vermont, he always had us off the boat in the water before the first cup of coffee, no matter the weather or wind conditions or the temperature. When I woke up Saturday morning on Mink Lake, before a thought bubble had formed over my head, I tripped into a wet bathing suit and stumbled to the lake edge. e-ee-e-eee-e-e-eahhhha -ach. Into still waters I slipped, warming with every stroke, pushing through the top layer cooled by night and finding yesterday afternoon's tepid slick. It was just enough exertion and cold water to wake up, and spur me onto the reward of fleece pants and the first cup of coffee.
We committed the cardinal sin on this trip. Between the two of us, neither of us brought socks. It was cold at night. It was cold after the morning swim. We needed socks.
And I knit socks, continually, religously, obsessively. Thick, thin, working, art-y, plain, cabled, bright, dim. My friends have been giving me gifts of store socks for years. When my mother started to knit again, she gave me socks, of the thick acrylic blend of faux Christmas sock slipper variety. When I go to the ONE OF A KIND show every December in Toronto, I buy the Quebecois mohair bed socks, and of course I buy every other bit of mohair product they have, including short tall mens' womens' black blue natural mauve single double mohair socks and mittens. I give these bed-socks away, and I've kept enough pairs for personal usage that I've managed to stash a pair in all my suitcases and travel packs for "visiting" emergencies. There is nothing worse than sleeping away from home, and being woken by cold feet. There was no precious little knob of mohair bed socks tucked into my bag this weekend. Whimper and wail, no socks.
The ultimate irony was that this was a sockknitting weekend, and between us we had five pairs of unfinished socks. Never again. Je me souviens. Je me souviendra. I'm putting an emergency sock stash everywhere this week.