Once upon a time according to the calendar above my bed this was going to be a “do nothing” day. Ha, ha. I am busy dealing with contractual and fundraising issues that have already arisen days before my first official meeting with the ROM, and the shock to some of this sudden apparent change of plans.
I am not blaming anyone who thinks I am unreliable due to this sudden shift. I COULD have said “No” to the ROM. I could have said: “Sorry, I have been busy creating a very different spring, and I won’t have time for you.” I didn’t.
Anyway, enough of that. Nothing is “real” until contracts are signed and until then the emotional energy is best directed elsewhere, in my opinion.
So I went dancing.
There is an annual party put on by and for caregivers who are mostly women and mainly Philippino domestics who are intent on getting landed immigrant status in Canada while sending as much money home as possible to bring family members here. Another typical scenario is that they are saving to buy a home in the Philippines. I got to know several such people through a long term friendship with a man – Tim (now pronounced “Teem” since he married such a caregiver) who has a lifetime commitment to providing good support to vulnerable people.
I am aware that the situation surrounding “imported” caregivers is fraught with abuses and fundamentally is established to put these people at an economic disadvantage. However I have never met such a person who wasn’t enthusiastic about the arrangement. Those I have met seem to have been planning since early teenage to become either nurses or caregivers, to marry a man who will follow a similar path but in Saudia Arabia or Hong Kong, to meet up with him for six weeks every two years, and otherwise work six days a week and go to evangelistic church then party on the seventh. Five nights a week caregivers sleep at the “employer’s”, and on the other two nights they sleep two women to a bed in a two bedroom, eight person apartment.
It’s not an arrangement that many Canadians can fathom as a choice. Since running across this sub-culture I have marvelled.
One clear aspect of this lifestyle is that the women are very close to each other, hugging and kissing openly and frequently, dressing for each other – tonight they held a beauty pageant reminiscent of the “meat market” shows long out of favour in Canadian Caucasian culture – and paying much less attention to “eligible” men than I would expect in my familiar circles.
When they party they bring home cooked food and eat extravagantly, they sing and they dance – mostly with each other although men are not obviously excluded.
I love to dance when people are not coupling. When people are dancing in pairs moving a wheelchair on the dance floor can be an awkward and lonely effort. When it’s more free form, my presence seems to give people permission to strut their stuff in any way they can and to have a good time. People will try me out in ones or twos, doing their personal gyration for a short while, then move on. In the general moving on I get to go from person to person too, which is way easier to do in a wheelchair and more fun anyway to me.
Three times I have successfully done the couple thing on the dance floor, twice with a man. One guy and the woman are trained dancers, and all moulded their dance steps to the movements a wheelchair can actually do. I was able to keep up the dance in close “formation” for more than an hour – a feat of tremendous stamina and exhilaration for me and my partners.
I rarely get to dance. It’s something I love to do. Occasionally I remember and take steps to find an accessible place. Typically it’s too expensive or fixated on couple style dancing and I “forget” to pursue this pleasure.
But tonight I danced with Philippino women (and Teem). I had a great time. It is good to move my sore body again and to lose myself in the beat. It is a way to feel that I am “me”.
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