Tastes sweet.

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 3, "Flight Home".

To Kevin and Crystal, if they read this: I was just listening to the radio, and they reviewed Sufjan Stevens's Christmas CD. It made me so happy! Good music. :o)

December 21, 2006: Colle Family Christmas Ball, Marland Mansion, Ponca City, Oklahoma

At six forty-five, I drove Grant V. and Philip to the Marland Mansion for the Colle family Christmas ball. I felt plastic and elegant, my face thick with makeup, my skirts scrunched together under the steering wheel. Then, as I walked beside Philip toward the mansion, delight surged up in me. The grand house, glowing in every window, the bracing cold air, my skirts swaying around my ankles—perfectly lovely. Like a retelling of a fairytale. We stepped through the heavy wooden doors and into the foyer. Josiah, the youngest Colle boy, took our tickets. Philip and I walked down the three grand flights of stairs, on either side of the banister, which was entwined with garlands of greenery, silver lights, and gold ribbon. We were among the first to arrive. Everyone stood around, the mix of stiffness and excitement. Matt took Tara into the ballroom and showed her some swing moves, tipping her back and spinning her while she laughed. Wreaths and little trees decorated the refreshment table, where a bowl of pink punch and trays of cookies were nestled among the greenery.

Slowly, people entered the room, filing down the long staircase. Black suits, bright dresses. David, Spencer, and David wore tweed caps. Matt asked me to be his partner for the Grand March. As we lined up for the procession, I glanced back over my shoulder and gasped. So many couples were lined up behind us! Faces, pressed forward, smiling. And still more people were descending the grand staircase to join, ladies holding up their skirts with gloved hands. The Grand March is one of the best parts of the dance. Elegant and cheerful. “It’s impossible not to smile when you’re doing this sort of thing,” Matt chuckled, “because everyone else is smiling.” Spencer and Syneva led us in a long line—a long snaking line of couples, probably about forty couples. Follow-the-leader, round and round the room, quick stepping in time to the music. Couples following couples, then joining hands in a long weaving line, snaking around, tying an intricate knot of moving bodies, flashing shoes, swishing skirts, then untying itself, couples pairing up again. Keep stepping in time to the music, the rustle of skirts, the click of soles, the murmur of voices over the medieval Christmas carol. Then Syneva and Spencer made a bridge, and the couple behind passed through and made a bridge beside them, and the next, and the next, until a long line of arches had formed. Matt and I stooped down, he leading me by my gloved hand under the arched arms. Light patterned the tiled floor, stripes like branches of a tree, hands growing together, skirts and slacks next to each other. Then we came to the end of the tunnel and made our own arch, to continue the tunnel, and other couples passed through, and stood beside us. The tunnel dissolved into itself. Couples again, following each other. Mr. and Mrs. Colle stood at the foot of the ballroom, and each couple came up to them in turn, bow and courtesy. Then the couples joined into rows of four, bow and courtesy. Then in lines of eight, bow and courtesy. When the music ended, we were all standing in lines of eight, facing the Colles. Mr. Colle welcomed everyone, his genteel voice drawling slightly, echoing over the assembled crowd—faces turned up toward him, gentle light glowing on careful costumes. “Gentlemen, our job is to give the ladies a good time. So unless you are married or engaged, find a new partner for each dance, and make sure no lady is sitting unless she wants to,” he directed.

Then the dancing began in earnest. Since there were so many people, probably about ninety, we had good dances going in both rooms, with a few spectators left over to hover around the dessert table. Syneva and Rachel, her sister, called the dances. We went through each one without music. Then when the music started, we were “on our own”, though often during the harder ones a murmuring undercurrent of whispered counts ran under the music, everyone trying to keep time as they danced. The music was mostly Celtic and medieval, Christmas carols and Christmas songs. Harpsichord, guitar, mandolin, pipe, flute, violins, cellos. We danced the Scottish Wheel, the Fairfield Fancy, the Middleton, the Virginia Reel, the Waves of Tory, the Spanish Waltz, the Mr. Darcy dance, the Emma dance, the Postease, and the Dashing White Sergeant, though not in that order. Last night at the practice Syneva had run through them from easiest to hardest; tonight, they interspersed the dances. We danced the Postease three times, for instance, and the Virginia Reel twice in a row. Between dances, there was the shuffle for partners, gentlemen looking around for ladies, ladies knotting together to chat briefly before whisked off to join another partner.

I danced the Virginia Reel with Andrew. It was glorious fun, sasheing up and down the line. David Moore was my partner for the Emma dance—the main thing I remember was the sudden short twirls, bursts of heady dizziness as my dress spun out to curve properly around my ankles again, back in line. When we reached the top of the line, having progressed down the floor, we had to stand out a turn, so David waltzed me, going in fancy twists and circles. Dance after dance, the patterns repeated from dance to dance. In the inner room, it was very warm, but the outer room was cold, where one of the iron-wrought doors had been propped open. Dancing the Middleton with Philip, I shivered as we passed the door, the cold night air on my bare arms. I stood out during the first round of Postease, to take pictures. Almost as fun to watch as to dance, to see the flying feet, the spinning arms, the faces of the dancers breaking into broad grins. Alisha and Philip were partners in a set that included Matt and Tara, and I took pictures of them, long curls and coattails flying.

It seemed like a very long time later when Mr. Colle announced the “intermission”, a twenty-minute break halfway through the night. I sat down briefly on a bench, and Philip courteously brought me some water. My feet in the golden sandals ached a little, but they were mostly numb enough that I didn’t feel much. Tara had taken off her shoes upon reaching the mansion, and pattered around in her bare feet. During the break, Syneva announced that they would dance a fast polka in the outer room. The outer room filled with couples. To the Cossack dance from the second half of “The Nutcracker”, the couples swirled around the room. Matt and Syneva danced together. Almost impossibly fast, the music pulled the dancers in a torrent of galloping feet. I grinned, watching Syneva’s face as she pursed her lips and flung up her eyebrows, like a wide-eyed doll, her white satin skirts spinning out over her soft black slippers.

After the polka, Mandi somehow managed to pull together all the RUFers on the grand staircase for a group picture. First, all the girls stood on the balcony above the staircase: one flight of stairs runs down, and two other flights curve up from the foyer, to enter the grand ballroom on the upper floor. We stood where these two other flights meet, above the archway. Eight of us, and Alisha’s friend, in our gowns and jewels and upswept hair. Then everyone stood on the grand staircase. Mandi stood below us and took a picture up toward us.

After the intermission, dancing resumed with the Postease. Then came the Broom Waltz: a rather comic dance in which there are one too many gentlemen, and one gentleman has to dance with the broom until he can find a female partner. I sat this one out, watching on the fringe. Colors! Black, grey, silver, brown, blue for the gentlemen. Scarlet, pink, burgundy, blue, white, black for the ladies. The red dresses of the Ponca City basketball girls, and Mandi’s jade green dress with the gold overslip. We danced several more, and then the Gloria dance. I sat that one out, too. Quite a simple dance. Instead of music, everyone sang, and then, on the “Hosanna in excelsis” bit, the girls jumped, the gentlemen guiding them, to the next partner. Skirts flared outward, muscles tensed, an elegant parade, like the petals of a wind-blown flower.

Everyone was becoming tired by this time. We danced the Dashing White Sergeant again, and then the Mr. Darcy dance. The Mr. Darcy dance was to “Silent Night”, so slow and serene that I began to feel sleepy, but with a sort of elegant, crystalline awareness, so tired that it took precise effort to move each muscle for the stately steps. Matt asked me to be his partner. As the dance began, he glanced toward a corner and shook his head. “There’s my brother sitting like a cat next to a girl who could be dancing!” he sighed, seeing Andrew lazing next to Joanna. After the Mr. Darcy dance, we danced the Postease one last time. Matt L. was my partner for this one, in a set with Alisha and several other RUFers. At first the music sounded slow, with a bass beat. Then the instruments came in, and everyone clapped and cheered. Faster and faster we danced, until the gentlemen were sweating, and the ladies’ hair was quite disarrayed. I couldn’t stop laughing. The music kept going and going, fast, the pulsing, impetuous drive of the fiddles and pipes holding us relentlessly in its pattern so that we couldn’t help but laugh and keep dancing. Fast feet, quick hands, quick spins, fast turns into place. Skirts whirling, feet stomping. Like flying, almost. It made me happier than I’ve been in a long time. When the music finally ended, the two rooms erupted with cheers and clapping.

Mr. Colle, standing under the archway between the two rooms, thanked everyone for coming. Then Syneva, in her sweet, pure voice, started to sing the doxology. Her soprano spiraled up, sending echoes beyond the rafters as the rest of the guests joined. Reverently slow, deeply thankful. It ended with clapping and bursts of “Merry Christmas!” all round. Then it was time for good-byes, final pictures, hugs. The mansion emptied quickly, a stream of people stepping up the stairs. Philip lent me his jacket as we crossed over the threshold and into the chilly night. I drove us back to the Colles’ house.

At the Colles’ house, everyone collapsed. We sat around in the living room, laughing and talking, though more subdued than we had been. Andrew and Joanna left to drive back to Tulsa. Alisha was hungry, not having eaten any supper in the rush to dress for the ball, so Syneva, Alisha, and I went scouting into the kitchen. Mrs. Colle had turned on the crock pot with the soup in it. Alisha sipped her soup while I munched a cookie. We talked quietly, everyone relaxing. An undercurrent of laughter beneath the subdued voices. Alisha, Syneva, and I curled up on the sofa together, a sea of satin and tulle, still in our dresses, our skirts poofing out over our knees. Spencer and David Moore left to drive back to Stillwater, so we said our good-byes to them.

I roused myself enough to dive downstairs, change clothes, shower, and then patter back upstairs again in my pajamas, with Philip’s sweater over my clothes to make it modest. I curled up on the living room floor beside Tara. Everyone was still sitting around, talking. Grant and Matt L. had a very technical conversation about mathematics by the fireplace. Syneva and Stefni dozed on the sofa. Alisha, David McMillan, and Philip discussed colleges. Tara curled up like a little mouse on the floor. I sprawled out to write in my journal about the day. “What number is that?” Syneva asked me. “Sixty-three,” I said, checking inside the front cover. Because of a momentary silence, everyone had heard her question. “You’ve written in sixty-three books! What do you do with them all?” someone marveled. That started the usual conversation about journals, everyone else talking about how they either don’t have time/discipline to write, or about how they only write occasionally, to relieve stress—while I, minding my own business, just kept writing.

Finally, a little after two o’clock a.m., common consensus seemed to develop that it was bedtime. Tara and I led the girls downstairs, and I stretched out on my airmattress. There was still a soft bustle of feet and voices, sparse conversation as girls got ready for bed. As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear Alisha and Catharine in the big bed (Tara and I slept on airmattresses on the floor of Rachel Colle’s room, while Alisha and Catharine slept in her double bed) whispering and giggling.