This Dance of Life

First published in my print column, The Nature of Things

The older I get the more I realize that most life experiences are worth far more than their face value in the moment. I wanted to explain this to my eldest daughter who was lamenting her age, having just turned 32. But I think there are some things that time alone can teach.

Once upon a time I owned an historic hotel with my husband. We operated the 14-room behemoth as a Bed and Breakfast and had some incredible experiences, and met some wonderful (and a few not-so-wonderful) people over the course of those years. And had lots of wild times.

There was a fire.
And a flood.
Then the second flood. 
And then there were the bats…

One bat story in particular stands out in my memory: the night one poor, unsuspecting creature made the fatal mistake of squeezing through the vents of the window air conditioner in our bedroom in the middle of the night. 

I was awake when the bat first entered the room, the dark shadow of his wingspan moving across the ceiling, circling and diving, swooshing by my head close enough I could feel the breeze off his little dusty wings. (Turns out, I have an inexplicable and irrational fear of bats I never knew about, until the hotel.)

I screamed, waking my husband from a deep sleep.
“Marc! There’s a bat in here! Get him!” I yelled, practically pushing him out of the bed with my scrambling feet as I jerked the covers off him, trying to encase myself in a protective cocoon of bedding.

Groggy and in shock, Marc obediently sat up, groaning in agony when his feet hit the floor, as he was suffering with a bad back at the time.

“I can’t do it—my back,” he moaned, bracing a hand against his spine.

“I’m not getting out from under here,” I said in a voice muffled by the sheet stretched fully over my head. “You have to do it.”

Meanwhile, the bat continued cruising through our room, dipping and diving while Marc looked around for something within reach to swat him with.  

As a side note here, I’ll mention that Marc and I shared similar tastes in furnishings, favoring antiques and the rustic; western- and Native American-themed decor. That being the case, our bedroom sported a few rather unique accent pieces, one of which was an 8-foot long Native American spear which hung on the wall above his chest of drawers. 

To this day, I’m still a little hazy on why Marc chose that particular weapon with which to go after the bat. Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly, having so recently been jolted awake by a scream in his left ear. Perhaps he was overcome with some long-latent caveman instinct. Or maybe—most likely—he was just in too much pain to consider walking any further than the two steps it took to reach the spear.

Whatever the reason, whether in agonizing pain or not, to his credit, Marc resolved to remedy the situation and calm his crazed wife, no matter what it took.

Peeping from beneath the edge of the sheet, petrified, but risking the exposure to ensure the bat was dealt a deathly blow, I watched the battle unfold.

Naked, and limping around the room in the gait of Quasimodo, Marc wildly swung the spear, cursing in pain and frustration, jousting at the air as the bat swooped and circled, his speed and complexity of aerobatics increasing each time the spear head came close to making a connection. 

Too horrified in the moment to fully appreciate the spectacle, I urged Marc on from beneath the safety of the sheet. 

“Get him! Ooo, you almost had him! There!! No, over there now! GET HIM!! KILLLLL HIIIIMM!!!!”

Wearing out at one point, Marc leaned on the spear handle like a crutch to catch his breath and, looking at me with mild aggravation, suggested I get out of bed and help. 

But there was no way that was going happen, and I re-emphasized my position on the matter in rather colorful language.

At this juncture, the bat appeared to be having second thoughts on his chosen point of entry into the hotel, and he began circling the air conditioner, seeking an exit. 

Seeing this, and sensing a moment of advantage over his prey, Marc shambled and lurched across the room as fast as his condition allowed, the spear thrust before him like a giant bayonet.

I swear to this day, I saw terror in the beady ink-colored eyes of that bat, looking over his furry little shoulder as he frantically tried to squeeze himself back through the grill, and I almost had a moment of sympathy. 

But not quite.

“GET HIM!” I hollered.

But Marc didn’t need any encouragement from me by this point; he was fully engaged in the hunt now for reasons all his own as he jabbed and stabbed and huffed and cussed, thrusting the head of the spear repeatedly into the narrow vent fins through which the bat had (mostly) disappeared.

Once it became clear—as evidence on the head of the spear finally revealed—that the bat had lost the battle, Marc limped back to bed, still naked, still hurting, though thoroughly energized by the barbarism of his victory. 

It was then I thought to myself—not for the first time—how nice it was to have a good man around when you really needed one.

The hotel provided a treasure trove of experiences like that one, many horrible and traumatic to live through in the moment, but then taking on a different light to think back on later.

The weddings we hosted, the holiday parties, endless laundry, dishes and vacuuming—which Marc, a dyed-in-the-wool farmer, never complained about, except to say it was a “far cry from operating heavy equipment.”  

Sunday mornings I’d lay out a big buffet breakfast, and after all the guests had checked out, we’d crank the jukebox and dance in the back bar in between rounds of cleaning up. 

Someone once said that the world was made round so we can’t see too far down the road ahead. And I guess that must be true. If had I known then what lay ahead for us, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a single, magical moment, that didn’t always seem that magical, in the moment, but now is so easily recognizable.

Multiple strokes. The resulting dementia. The unfair betrayal of Marc’s body that ravaged his mind, erased our past, robbed our future, and crushed any chance for making more memories together. That’s what came next.

This is what I was trying to put into words for my daughter—how turning 32 is a great blessing, not a tragedy; how fleeting and fragile life really is; and how this dance won’t last forever, for anyone, and we don’t fully grasp the weight of this truth until we get hit with it, head-on. 

I was thinking all this, but the only thing I managed to say was, “Happy Birthday, honey.”