warmth

When I fell through the looking glass about two years ago and found a home in the magical community loosely arranged around the contra dance scene in western Massachusetts/southern Vermont, one of the things that delighted me most was seeing the ways in which community members really take care of each other in ways both practical and creative. There are many people here with various skills who actually truly enjoy sharing them with friends and neighbors, often spontaneously, sometimes even secretively.

Part of me wants to start down a long winding philosophical road here that would take us through a comparison of the contra dance community and church/religious communities, which would necessitate mentioning the theory I came up with at my potluck Sunday evening that religion, sports, and (to a certain extent) dancing are similar in the way that they bond partners and create strong relationships. But I won't go there (at least not now).

Instead, I'll mention my potluck to point out that, though it wasn't incredibly well-attended, I really enjoyed it once I reminded myself that greater quantity (of people) does not equal greater quality (of interaction) and started seeing it as the unique opportunity it was to sit around a table with a group of people that would otherwise never all be eating dinner together, even though we all see each other just about every weekend on the dance floor. For example, for about the first hour and a half, my guests were:

- a slightly older gentleman who owns a stringed instruments shop in Amherst, MA
- a 23-year-old friend whose major interests include dancing, cars, and the gorgeous art he creates
- a 40(ish?)-year-old carpenter who is my favorite waltz partner north of the Mason-Dixon line (beautifully nicknamed by the fabulous Froggoddess as "the Space Cowboy").

It was odd, and it was lovely. Because of the unique, highly-social-but-not-necessarily-conversational nature of contra dancing (particularly between people of the same gender roles, since you mostly have the chance to talk with your partner, who is usually of the opposite gender) (but doesn't have to be!), I don't know how often, if ever, those three men have actually had a conversation together. I think they learned a lot about each other.

And because every single person in this community (and, you know what? everywhere) has such knowledge and gifts to share, within the first hour of the get-together I'd learned from them about 1) the inner workings of both the old upright piano and the pellet stove that live in our house, and how we could get both to work (though it occurs to me that if we don't get either to work, we could always burn the piano for some desperately-needed warmth in the house), 2) how to repair a broken clutch on a stick-shift car, and 3) that it's the fault of a crooked hinge that my front door sticks shut so badly that you have to body-slam it to open it.

And then when I came home from work yesterday and turned the door knob, preparing for the right-hip-jab that's given me a permanent bruise, the door just swung right open. It was like magic. Or like a magical carpenter had alighted at my door and fixed the hinge.

So now I'm going to buy the Space Cowboy a beer one of these days, and throw another potluck sometime soon to see what else my community is willing to teach me, and hope that I'm successully reciprocating in some small way. I love living here.