To and from the “best years”

Sometimes I feel like handing in my card. The card that says I am an adult, that is. In the middle of a laid-back, anything-goes girls' weekend recently with an old friend and our daughters in tow, the seventies disco music on the radio took me back to a place and a time that seemed to be all about fun. What group of us was going to what bar (there seemed to be so many of them, back then) and we stayed out until 1 a.m. in Hawkesbury, then until 3 a.m. in one of the bars in Grenville or Calumet or Pointe-au-Chene. It seemed like a big community of young people, moving from one place to another. And we danced.
Even though I was working at The Review during the week, there were enough students returning home on weekends to maintain this community of friends. I left work behind on evenings and weekends and so did we all.
I think those were what we call "the best years of our lives",  and maybe they were because we didn't know it at the time. It was just life and we thought that those times would go on forever.
They didn't, of course. It happens to everyone. People move away. Going out together turns into married, with children. There's the house, a car or two, moves, one job and then maybe another job and you wonder how you got here and when the dancing stopped.
Life isn't always a smooth trip; sometimes illness strikes. Our children stumble and we stumble, too.
I understand that expression about "forgetting oneself." For it is only in forgetting oneself, in a certain way, that I can forget about all the pressures that seem so serious these days.
I always wonder what rollicking adventures are befalling everyone around me and reflect on the intensity of my own life when in restaurants or in public places, a table full of laughing people telling loud stories makes me wonder how it is that they are having so much fun. And darn it if they don't even talk loud enough so I can find out what great things are happening in their lives.
As I move from task to task and focus on "getting things done", I remind those around me that I used to be fun.
I know, of course, that if I think that way, I won't be any fun at all.
So I do try to lighten up. Perhaps we all go through this everything-is-serious stage and come out the other side, older and with a healthier perspective. Nothing stays the same. Today is all we have. Tomorrow is a new day. And as my mother says when she thinks I am preparing to worry about something: Just don't think about it. She's right.
We can think of other things, forget ourselves and forego the self-torture.
When I was a young mother and even more consumed by responsibility than I am now, an old family friend asked me if I went out dancing every Saturday night. "Dancing?" I sputtered. Right.
"Dance while you still can," he said and he meant it.
He passed away a few years ago, but for decades, did go out dancing with his wife every Saturday night. They did that for almost all the years that I knew them.
I can get away and forget myself, even if I don't leave town that often. Even if most of the haunts of my youth are long gone. Even if I still do have so much to think about.
It seems to be about giving myself permission to set everything down for a while and not think that I will never be able to pick it up again. In other words, the world keeps turning, I tune out and come back ready for more.
At the end of this week, I will be taking a break from this day job. Before I leave, I'll be listing what has to be worried about and taken care of and dividing it up among many people so that all will be well for the time I will be away.
So far, I haven't lined up any dance dates. But you never know.