250 SHADES OF BLUE, and I have most of them hanging on my closet!  I have three pair of “navy” jeans and a pair of “navy” pants; each one is a different color blue.  And forget about having any of them match up with any of my “navy” tops.  (Note:  First World Problem)

I DON’T HAVE A BUCKET LIST; there is only one thing I want to do (again) before I die.  I want to go to a ballroom dance with a partner and dance the afternoon away.  Why “afternoon”? you ask?  Because the dance is at a senior center at 2 p.m.

So, here’s my plan, since I don’t have a partner (and assuming that the shot I will get in my back on Tuesday at the Pain Management Center will solve that limitation):

Sometime in the beginning of October, I will contact Sara at EdanSe Company and Ballroom and ask if she might know of an intermediate male dancer who is free on the afternoon of October 21 and would like to earn $50 for two hours of dancing with me. At first, that seems like a lot of money, but it’s worth it to me.

I quit ballroom dancing several years ago because my knee was giving out.  And I stopped driving at night.  Since then, I got my knee replaced, and if my back gets treated, I’ll be good to go (in the daytime).  Sara should remember me because I wrote and shared a poem about her young twin instructors.

LUNCH WITH BETTY, whom I haven’t seen in more than a year, was yesterday, at her Senior Center.  It was my first ever Center lunch, and I have little desire to return.

Betty was part of my pre-Covid writing group, and she was one of the best writers in it. Today, she is a tiny, frail looking woman with silver hair and carefully applied makeup.  At age 95, she is now part of another weekly writing group, and she recently just stopped taking weekly ballroom dances.  (For which she paid her teacher, privately, more than I could ever afford.)

Betty holds court at a lunch table comprised of three men and one other woman.  They are like her entourage, and she she regales them with her writings, delivered in a volume that her (hearing impaired) fans can accept.  She, herself, she tells me later, has one cochlear implant and one hearing aid.  She also has congestive heart failure and upper back pain for which she carries around a microwavable heating pad.

After lunch, she invites me to her home, and I follow her stick-shift Mini Cooper to an older, lovely, well-kept upper middle class home in a lovely upper middle class neighborhood. She lives alone. I aske her what she usually does all day after early lunch at the Senior Center.  Usually, she says, she sits with her heated pad behind her back and watches Asian movies on Netflix (because they are all romantic and they end happily).  I finally leave because Betty has an appointment at CVS for her flu and COVID shots.  She goes to bed around 9 p.m.

Betty has the advantage of being financially comfortable.  But she also daily faces the pains and discomforts and challenges of being 95 years old. I think that she personifies what Betty Boop would be like at 95.

THE DANCE OF SEPTEMBER SUNFLOWERS