Glad

We've laughed, played games, taken pictures, lots of them, sampled different styles of music, eaten every kind of food from every corner of the world, and best of all, we've danced at the parties we always have the last day of my ESL courses at the local community college.

Oh, the dancing. I remember one young woman from Nepal, dancing as if in a trance, her arms and hands crossing and recrossing in front of her, a young man from Ethiopia stepping  forward while shaking his shoulders, and an older Eritrean woman matching him. I remember Middle Eastern women belly dancing and Latinas dancing salsa, forro, bachata, meringue. Many East Asians, demurring that they had no tradition of dancing, had to be cajoled to get up from the desks pushed back against the wall to join the circle in the middle of the room. There were impromptu lessons. We followed the best dancers to pick up their moves. Some dancers were awkward;  others smooth as silk, the middle-aged men and women often in that latter category.

Sometimes the party would be slow starting but we always ended up sweating profusely as we listened to each other's music. We formed conga lines, circles, lines, couples, or were just single people jumping, jiggling, stepping, shaking, turning, twisting. As if we were at concerts, we lifted our arms, cheered and stamped our feet

Each party has been different because each class is a unique mix of personalities and ethnic characteristics. Some of the quietest in class have been majestic on the dance floor. The confident in class have sometimes been retiring and resisted the tuggings of their classmates. The pressure is off; the certificates passed out. The nine or sixteen weeks of lessons are drawn to a close, as well as that special camaraderie that knits a group together; everyone is dancing the Last Dance, before the final pictures, exchanges of numbers and addresses, more pictures, the clean-up and divvy up of the remaining abundance of food, hugs, and final goodbyes.

Over time, the course-end parties have gotten more and more sedate. So last night, though there was music, and I made a bit of a spectacle of myself moving to it, we mostly spent our time eating tacos and sushi and Greek pizza while talking about life and death and quinceanera. I learned for instance, to my surprise, how almost everyone around the table--from Brazil, Guatemala, Thailand, El Salvador, Myanmar--had fond memories of farm life in their youth.

We still took a lot of pictures on each person's cellphone. Many looked forward to being together in the next class, and expressed sadness that I wouldn't there too. We wished each other well with hugs and handshakes, depending on tradition, and waved goodbye.

You, my many, many students in my many, many classes, each of you special, all of us intimate with each other for a period of time in the travail of learning English, episode after episode of encounter after encounter, how acutely now, and often, have I felt that we were enacting and embodying something beyond us, something that, though the classes are over, long over, continues to shine somewhere (perhaps between and within God-in-love and the Beloved), something that lifts my heart even as I write, something that makes me glad for my life.