Have you ever felt that you have so many things to say, to write about, but you discover that you are completely incapable of doing it? That you have to force yourself?

I’d like to write beautifully about all of these “things,” but I’m just not up to it. I’d like to write about last night’s Prom at Dive. How surprised we were that so many girls could take the event so seriously. How relieved I was to walk in wearing a dress from the fifties that I found in a dusty corner of my favorite vintage clothing shop, to realize how wonderful it is to be silly. How fun it was to dance with a man with a gorilla mask and a suit from the seventies, to waltz with a girl wearing a dress that could have been worn by an extra in Sixteen Candles. I don’t think I danced at my own prom. I definitely didn’t like my date. And of course, I hadn’t yet discovered gin. Sweet, sweet gin.

I’d like to talk about how my sweetie danced with me and twirled me in circles to cheesy eighties songs he hated. How he understood that my mother used to blare Billy Joel songs when she was getting ready to go out with my father and she wheeled around the house, smelling of rarely worn makeup and Opium perfume, and he kept dancing with me. I’d like to tell you about stepping outside to smoke cigarillos on a night always on the verge of storming. My dress would get caught by the breeze and I, standing there with my cigar and my Jackie O hat, made my friends giggle and take black and white digital photos.

But don’t forget the gin, the tinkle of ice in the glass, the pulp of lime sticking to your lip, the twirling and stepping in four inch heels from the forties. Not a stumble. Not one. These twenty-nine year old legs are strong. They’ll pedal thirty, forty, fifty, sixty miles on a Saturday morning. They’ll dance to Tiffany songs. They are no longer hidden and criticized for every little flaw. They are twenty-nine years old, and they haven’t failed me yet.

I’d like to talk about how I felt light and weightless last night. I suppose I could give some of the credit to the gin, but there’s more. I was twelve years old, I was twenty-nine, I was seventy. I wondered if it ever goes away, the desire to reach for your mother when things get tough, when you need someone to run to, someone to fix things? I danced knowing my mother, my mommy, couldn’t dance at 25, at 30, ever again. Her legs would not take her anywhere on a Saturday morning. She never went to prom. And she couldn’t go again. She never walked home barefoot and singing on a Thursday night, kissing and being kissed, loving every inch of her strong and faithful body.

I thanked the gin, last night. Gin helped. Gin, and that dress, and that hat, and that cigar, and those shoes, and that music, and my sweetie helped me, for moments, be a little less afraid. Afraid that she’s gone. Afraid that she asked to take her Jello last night instead of asking to take her pills. Afraid that when I talk to her again, she won’t really be there. Afraid that I won’t have anyone to run to. Afraid that when these legs dance at my wedding, her legs won’t be there.

I wondered, if she really thinks that it’s 1975, does she think that she can walk again? Will she want to kiss her husband and put her baby girls to bed?

I feel like I can’t say these things anymore, that I can’t write about them. I’m not 19 and in college and being told that I can write. I don’t get good marks for my writing these days. Is it crazy that my twenty-nine year old brain still measures itself this way? I can’t write about things anymore, but I suppose I just did, and that makes me happy, too. I can dance, I can write, I can drink gin, and I can dance to Billy Joel. Tonight I will eat burritos and watch a Superman movie on a 6-story screen. I will kiss my sweetie and wrap myself in him. Maybe I will write something else. It might not be pretty, but it will always be there.