The Man Who Loves Opera Also Loves to Dance

The almost-83-year-old man I met last week in the tiny adjunct teachers' office was there again today. His name is Clifford. I swear, he is a walking textbook on how to eat up the baked carcass of life in big juicy bites and then make a necklace from the bones.

During his decades of teaching and opera-going, he also managed to fit in 30 years of dance lessons. FLAMENCO dance. He performed on some small tours in his 20s and 30s and at age 55 was still honing his skills in Spain under the tutelage of a helpful dancing gypsy woman. (But really, aren't most dancing gypsy women helpful?)

In telling me about his early flamenco lessons, with an authoritarian of a flamenco teacher in Chicago, he stood up and took the perfect posture of a dancer, held his arms over his head ballet-style, and bent his left leg and held his foot up in the air, holding this pose for 30 seconds (flamenco/flamingo style) without a hint of shakiness. This is what his dance instructor made him work on for the first half dozen lessons 60 years ago. No actual dancing, just balance and steadiness.

He faced numerous obstacles on the dance floor. Flamenco dancing is not easy, as it turns out. When he had the routines perfected (or so he thought) his blunt instructor said "Here is your problem: You dance, but you're scared." And that was his next hurdle. Learning not to be scared.

Maybe because it was late in the day and because my blood sugar was very low, I found this exceptionally meaningful almost to the extent of being annoying. But it seems to me that that is the whole point in life. Or perhaps it's only the whole point to those of us who are scared shitless of so many things. I lie awake in bed and mentally list the things I'm worried about and catalog them like so many colorful, ornate fishing lures hooked into my lungs. It only stings when you try to breathe.

"I don't dare dance any more," Clifford told me. "It's too dangerous for the heart at my age. It's horrible to get old."

I don't know how long his own personal window was: that time between letting go of a substantial chunk of fear, and being too old to flamenco dance again. I picture my own window, if it happens, as very short. I will be spreading frosting on a graham cracker, sitting out on my front porch. Just as I put down the knife, it will occur to me that I am no longer scared feces-less of everything. Then an out of control steam shovel will rumble around the corner and flatten me like a fruit roll-up.