Shuffle-Tap-Stepping My Way Back to Life

At 57, while recovering from a brutal divorce, Monica Drake finds release, community, and joy in a beginner tap class.

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After my tap dancing class, I go to the care facility where most of the tenants are bed-bound or in wheelchairs. I ring the bell to be let in. While I wait, I’m still dancing, running on endorphins and muscle memory that spills over from the day’s one-hour practice. On the stained sidewalk, between a six-lane road and the spin of trash in the backwinds of traffic, I’m all shuffle shuffle tap step shuffle shuffle stomp. Shuffle, shuffle, Suzy-Q, step step, Suzy-Q…

It takes awhile to be let in. Most often, it's a patient who opens the door, one of the few who can get out of bed, somebody who has had to wheel themselves down a long, warped hallway, or shuffle with a walker, then reach as far as they can past their assistive device and give the heavy door a shove. It’s not easy. I appreciate their hard work, I understand, and I wait. 

I’m the only actual beginner in the tap dancing class I’ve been taking, which is called Absolute Beginners. The rest of the students apparently keep signing up, no matter how many times they’ve already taken it, always beginners, and I am just so fucking glad I’ve actually finally begun, that to put my tap shoes on and lace them up makes my heart sing. 

My earliest memories in this life are of wanting three things: a cat of my own, a tap dance class, and for certain adults around me to stop laughing at the softness of my baby-fat chin. 

Shuffle shuffle tap step, shuffle shuffle….

I did get a cat. 

At around 3 or 4, I slid under a bed at the home of family friends to reach for the kitten who was hiding, a beautiful six-toed tortoiseshell soon to become my dear friend—a huntress, my purring cat-mom for over a decade which I only wish had gone on longer. 

I’m the only actual beginner in the tap dancing class I’ve been taking, which is called Absolute Beginners. The rest of the students apparently keep signing up, no matter how many times they’ve already taken it, always beginners, and I am just so fucking glad I’ve actually finally begun, that to put my tap shoes on and lace them up makes my heart sing. 

Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo…

When the door to the care facility finally opens, I pull myself together, say thank you and walk inside those rooms filled with illness and labor to find a person who shall remain nameless, because their life and struggle isn’t mine to tell. I’m a guest, visiting a loved one. 

Tap stomp tap stomp ta-a-a–  

I reign it in, doing my best to walk without dancing, down the sallow, grease-and-disinfectant-scented halls. They call these places SNFs, which is short for Skilled Nursing Facilities, but the way the abbreviation is pronounced sounds like Sniff, as in, snuffed, as in snuffed out, sniffed out. It sounds like death, like murder. You have to ignore a lot to focus on the love, the care, the times things work out, the labor in tending to those who can’t manage during a rough patch, during life. 

Monica Drake tap dancing.

I’m 57. I started tap dancing at…57. I don’t know how long I’ll keep it up, I only know that for now, no matter how far off track my rhythm might fall, and no matter how often I forget the steps, I still can’t help but smile and sometimes laugh when I dance. 

The person I’m visiting is regrowing nerves in one arm. Without those nerve connections, the brain can’t tell an arm what to do. Nerves regenerate very slowly, essentially imperceptibly. It may take nine months, we’ve been told, or it may take a lifetime–however long a lifetime amounts to.

When people write about aging, often there’s a distinctly positive spin. We are beautiful, aging, they’ll write. Life is better now than I ever imagined, many say. I’m more myself, I’m more confident, I’m traveling, I’m living. I know things! These are the general themes. I wish I could say that has been the whole of my experience in my life, too. I do think those things are true. 

When I turned 50, I entered a crucible. To put a positive spin on it, one might say I found myself embarking on a particular kind of Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a term that refers to a series of archetypal steps in mythology and storytelling, as observed by Joseph Campbell, relayed in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. These steps involve establishing the ordinary world, and a character who is then hit with a “call to action,” or change. When that call is at first resisted, events occur bringing about an inability to resist, which leads to meeting a mentor…There’s much more. It’s worth reading.

I learned then what people mean when they refer to the “sandwich generation.” I was sandwiched between the elderly and the young, doing my best to help everyone along the age spectrum to survive in any way that I could, while also under attack from my ex and his lawyers.

My particular call to action was a common one: the call to divorce. When I hesitated, like every good hero in the making, my husband attacked me in our yard, in front of our child, and I could not hesitate any longer. If I met a mentor on this path, it was my third lawyer. Third! Years in court devoured everything I had, including so much love, my life savings, and almost all the hours of too many days. Over those same dark years, aging relatives fell into a need for medical care, and our daughter of course deserved the kind of daily love, support and attention that all children have a right to expect of their parents, and which I offer freely, willingly, exuberantly, ongoing, forever.

I learned then what people mean when they refer to the “sandwich generation.” I was sandwiched between the elderly and the young, doing my best to help everyone along the age spectrum to survive in any way that I could, while also under attack from my ex and his lawyers. Others, thank god, helped me tremendously. For that, I am grateful. I couldn’t have made it alone. Everything became a white-knuckle matter of life and death, often in too literal terms, under the constant threat of poverty, while I struggled to hold on to my job, hold on to our home, keep our child’s life stable and enjoyable, as childhood should be, while managing the ongoing and mounting legal demands of a vindictive, contentious divorce. 

Tap stomp tap stomp tap….

I entered into the hellish arena of divorce court during the hot flashes of menopause. I was physically, repeatedly on the stand, as though on stage without a script, where for years I was subjected to insults and derision. Certain people, including the judge, surprised me by actively policing my mid-life lady-face. I was told not to look so angry, not to scowl, to smile, to be nice. A hot flash is like a hand around your throat, like suffocation from the inside. While trapped on the witness stand, answering questions about trivialities, including debating the value and cost of organic lettuce, I prayed for the cooling fizz of a simple can of bubbly water. 

The college where I’d worked took a financial downturn, merged with another school, and I was among the many laid off. While unemployed, broke, recovering from first physical then psychological assault, and consumed by single-parenting, I also navigated the changes that occur in a woman’s body in the years when her cultural devaluation amps up as she shifts from young to old. 

Shuffle tap, shuffle tap, stomp tap stomp shuffle shuffle shuffle…

When I tap dance I’m temporarily transported away from all that. I am dancing back to simple, silly childhood dreams that never stood a chance, sure, but better yet, I am laughing in the moment, and that’s what matters now. My body is running on the upbeat brain chemistry found along certain neural pathways, and joy. 

I’m not the oldest in our class, or the youngest. I’m definitely not the best, but I’m present. Our teacher has been dancing for over fifty years, and she’s beautiful and graceful and funny. What matters is that we have these bodies to tend to. We have muscles, and muscle memory. I’m fortunate to be able to dance when I want to, no matter how well or how poorly. There are men and women in the class, grandparents and college-aged people and everyone in between, and we dance in something like unison.

I entered into the hellish arena of divorce court during the hot flashes of menopause. I was physically, repeatedly on the stand, as though on stage without a script, where for years I was subjected to insults and derision…I was told not to look so angry, not to scowl, to smile, to be nice.

The demeaning quality of the ongoing divorce court process took more than just my life’s savings and my days. There’s an ineffable aspect involved in being human—the spirit, which is not material, yet still it is as real as any organ, as real as a kidney or a spleen, a heart or a brain. Court eroded mine, in the deepest of ways. I saw the way the system works, and it is broken. We live in patriarchal capitalism. It’s about men and money, fundamentally structured around marginalizing and devaluing the feminine, the female, women and women’s labor and earnings. They crushed me. In court, I was shown a world in which my body, mind, labor and very humanity hold no human value. 

The good news is that I’m free of that particular court now, and I’m dancing. 

With every tap and swing of my leg, with every mistake and every right step, I’m rebuilding my spirit. My spirit is growing at the speed of crushed nerves: slowly. Still, I feel that intangible yet real and crucial aspect of my personal humanity, expand. I’m surviving. I’m happy. Nobody needs to police my face or the softness of my chin, at birth or at midlife, or my ass or each other’s, or the decision to invest in the expense of organic lettuce for a family meal, a child’s dinner. 

Aging? In our dance class, I am young. We all are young. Like the others, I will stay an Absolute Beginner for as long as I can. I’ll  keep experiencing the beauty that comes with the newness of life’s major miracles and gifts. For as long as I’m able, I’ll be  shuffling and hopping and doing the Suzy-Q all the way home.