Chapter 15 #2
“Conga line!” she shouts, like it’s a spiritual call. And I watch in awe as people in all states of alcohol-induced disinhibition fall in line behind her.
Marin, now halfway through the drink she insisted she didn’t want and already eyeing a second, groans. “Here we go.”
“Birdie! It’s time to release the pain and inhibition!”
Before I can bolt, she’s at my side, Viv, not pain, though same energy.
“Up! Now!” she commands, yanking me from my chair with the strength of someone fueled by merlot and righteous heartbreak.
“I don’t think I have the ankle stability for this,” I protest, but it’s too late.
I’m swept into the line, hands landing, regretfully, on the hips of a tan, overly confident man who looks like he’s been divorced since the ’90s and absolutely thriving. He gives me a wink that suggests he owns at least one timeshare and an expensive Bluetooth headset.
Behind me, Marin reluctantly joins in, muttering, “Plaid pants were not made for congo lines.”
Viv leads the way like a guru on a mission, high-kicking past the cheese table and nearly taking out a startled goat on a leash.
And now I’m part of the conga line at a goat wine bar on a Thursday night, hands on a stranger’s hips, questioning all my life choices.
“So,” Timeshare Ken yells over the music as he sashays his hips under my hands, “you recently divorced or emotionally unhinged?”
I blink a few times before realizing he can’t see me and yell back, “Neither?”
He winks. “Same. Love that journey for us.”
I try to sidestep out of the line, but it surges forward like a Merlot-powered stampede. Suddenly, we’re snaking between wine barrels and bachelorette parties, and someone behind me throws glitter. Actual glitter. It sticks to the sweat at the back of my neck and itches like a festive rash.
The salsa band kicks it up a notch, drums pounding like a heartbeat gone wild.
Viv shouts something unintelligible, maybe “Liberate your hips!”, and throws her hands skyward like she’s channeling every ounce of joy buried deep under years of laundry and color-coordinated holiday cards.
The air crackles with a kind of reckless freedom.
I don’t know what comes over me, maybe it’s the sangria, maybe it’s the exhaustion of trying to stay stiff and collected and not sweaty in this crowd, but something in me snaps.
A breath fills me, slow and steady, and I let out a sigh I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
A release I haven’t felt for years. Then, without thinking, I lean into it. Literally.
I start swinging my hips. I mean, really swinging them. Like I’m channeling Shakira shaking my ass in gold fringe. My arms start moving too, out of sync but passionately committed. I toss my head back and let out a yell that’s meant to be carefree but sounds slightly feral.
“GRIEF ISN’T LINEAR, BABY!”
I look back to see the woman whooping behind me isn’t Marin. She must’ve abandoned ship. Someone claps. A man in a floral shirt joins in uninvited and tries to start a second conga line, which fails, but honestly? The spirit was there.
I don’t stop. I double down. I throw in a shimmy.
A shimmy.
Who even am I?
That’s when I notice Viv at the edge of the crowd, casually holding her phone up with one hand, fanning herself with the other like a proud stage mom. She fixes the camera on me, mutters something about “midlife icons,” and I pray to God she isn’t recording this.
The conga line does another lap around the dance floor, and I feel like I’m reclaiming joy one shaky hip movement at a time.
I’m laughing. Full-belly, deep-wrinkle, laugh-till-you-snort laughing.
And the thing is, it feels good. It feels ridiculous, but it feels good.
I’m not sure what the hell I’m doing out here in the middle of a goat-filled vineyard, shaking my grief into submission, but for once, it doesn’t feel heavy.
It feels free.
After a few more laps, I decide I’ve sweat enough for one night and start scanning the room for our table.
That’s when I spot Marin, perched on a wine barrel, cheeks flushed, holding a sangria like it’s her emotional support drink.
The band slows down into something vaguely acoustic.
She stands up, clinking her glass with a fork she’s somehow acquired.
The room goes silent as she wobbles for a moment before hoisting herself up onto the barrel. “I just wanna say something,” she slurs sweetly. “To weird seasons of life. And weird friends. And a life that could be full of regret but somehow gives you exactly who you need to survive it.”
There’s a pause. Then someone cheers.
Viv, still on the sidelines fanning herself with a wine list in one hand and doing something with her phone in the other, pauses. “What she said!” she echoes before I think I hear her muttering something about, “Hashtag grief girls gone wild.”
The band picks up again, something vaguely Latin-pop but with the energy of a wedding DJ who’s stopped caring.
I finally escape the conga line only to find Marin slow-dancing with a man in a turtleneck and flip-flops.
She’s swaying in a circle, whispering something into his shoulder that might be a poem or possibly the word “cabernet” over and over.
“Marin?” I approach cautiously. “You good?”
She turns, her pupils the size of quarters. “This man has opinions about jazz. We’re soulmates.”
“I love that for you.” I gently pry her wine glass from her hand and hand her a complimentary cube of cheese like she’s a baby bird. Glancing down at my watch confirms it. It’s time to grab Viv and get out of here. As my mom always said, nothing good ever happens after midnight.
After making a few laps around the room, I’m about ready to call out a search party when I see a shadowy corner of the winery, where Viv is making out, full on making out, with a man wearing a linen vest and aggressively white sneakers.
He’s got one hand in her hair and another on her waist, and they’re swaying like it’s prom and they’re the only two people in the universe who know the lyrics to the soft indie rock song playing.
“Should we?” I motion helplessly, not expecting anyone to answer.
“Your friend?” the older woman to my right asks.
I nod.
“Leave her be. She looks hydrated and spiritually aligned. She needs this.”
I hate that I understand what she means.
And right when I think the night has hit its peak weirdness, someone yells, “You! Grief lady! Come up here!”
I blink. “Me?”
“I saw you in that congo line! We need you!” He points to the poster with the glaring message: "Groove Challenge."
I shake my head furiously. “No, thank you! I’m emotionally constipated and it comes out in my dancing!”
But the stranger next to me is already pushing me forward. “Time for you to get hydrated and spiritually aligned. You need this too!”
The next thing I know, I’m on a makeshift stage flanked by two servers, one with bleached eyebrows and a nose ring, the other with a mullet and Crocs covered in enamel pins, both holding wine glasses like microphones and looking at me like I’m about to perform instead of panic.
One of them shouts, “Okay, now, grind those hips, you got this!” and suddenly my hips are swinging in one direction while my arms go rogue in the opposite.
What they’re doing looks effortless, like a metronome with rhythm. What I’m doing looks like I’m trying to ward off a swarm of bees while also bracing for a squat I may never recover from.
“Am I doing it?” I shout over the music.
“No!” Viv yells cheerfully from the crowd, recording like her phone is a front-row seat to the Birdie Disaster Hour. “But it’s iconic!”
Someone hands me a sangria mid-shimmy, which I accept like a trophy for surviving this whole ordeal and perimenopause. I nearly drop it as I attempt an interpretive shoulder roll that results in an audible pop.
The crowd eats it up, and I don’t know whether to curtsy or call an orthopedist.
But then I catch my reflection in the window, flushed cheeks, dark strands of hair messy and wild, arms flailing with gusto, and I realize something shocking: I’m actually having fun.
Uncoordinated, unfiltered fun, fully leaning in.
God help me, I even try a spin I learned on TikTok at the end.
By the time I get down, I’ve sweated through my blouse and might’ve done a jazz-hands finale I’ll regret for the next decade.
“Do you think anyone was filming that?” I try to discreetly check my armpits.
Viv bounces over. “Sweetheart.” She waves her phone. “You’re already on Instagram. And TikTok. And a woman named HealingHeidi called you a goddess of grief.”
I slap my hand over my face.
There it is.
My worst nightmare.
My own words ring in my ear, “grief is private.”
Well, mine’s just gone public. In a very embarrassing way.
Marin stumbles over with a breadstick and slings her arm around my shoulder. “We’re gonna be famous. Like, widowed Spice Girls.”
“More like Sangria Seniors,” Viv mutters.
And then the lights dim, the band plays a slow song, and someone starts passing around a tambourine with glow sticks taped to it.
I glance at my glass, then the door. “I think we need fries.”
“Fries,” Marin echoes solemnly, still clinging to her breadstick. “And maybe a nap.”
We make our way toward the exit, leaving a trail of confetti from a broken party popper stuck to the back of my sensible flats. Behind us, Viv and the magician are exchanging numbers via a crystal pendulum.
This is not how I thought healing would look.
But maybe healing wears linen and dances in public and eats fries at midnight with people who remind you that you're still alive.
We barely make it ten feet from the winery before Viv flings her arm across the path like she’s directing traffic or starting a flash mob.
“Okay,” she declares. “That was either the best or worst decision we’ve made in years.”
“I haven’t danced that hard since my cousin’s second wedding,” Marin mumbles, staggering slightly in her sandals. “Or was it the third?”