What I want to know is, why didn’t some wise elder woman of the tribe park my late-teen (or earlytwentysomething) still-shiny new moons down on a bench somewhere, to point out that if I wanted to pirouette, there was still time to get those pins and glutes twirling? Why, oh, why, did it take Sun Chips and brownie bites and a striped couch that sinks in the middle and smells like dog farts to make me realize, twenty years later, that the kids on TV could have been me?

I’m a So You Think You Can Dance addict. I was before the separation kicked in, and I find it even more satisfying now, in the divorce’s final death throes. Maybe it’s because I’m struggling to remember what the hell I like to do. And there’s nothing better than watching people be really, really good at something they love to do. And, hot damn, they’ve got some fancy moves, these kids.

I thought I had some fancy moves, back then, whipping off my shirt to boogie in my bra to “Gett Off” with my women’s rugby team at college. I liked rugby because no one could tell if I was doing it well. In general, I find I gravitate toward activities where Pass and Fail are close enough to slip each other notes in class. Parenthood is a good example. Check back in twenty or so years and I’ll let you know how we did on that account, me and the ex. If I text you from the Alabama State Penitentiary, maybe give me a few more years.

I’m coming up on my 40th birthday. Everyone I know wants to lick a vampire or cuddle a werewolf these days, but I want to pop and lock and leap and twirl on the northernmost point of Iceland. Why Iceland? Got me. It’s calling me like Prince was calling me to rip my shirt off back in 1992 on the dance floor. I passed, then. A+, even. Yet for the past few years, it feels like this single mama at work has seen a lot of fail. Epic fail. I cry a lot. I don’t remember what I want to do, who I am anymore. Some days, I think if I never saw another computer again, never wrote another word again, I’d be fine.

But Iceland whispers in its friendly Frosty the Snowman voice (in Icelandic, with subtitles, of course): PASS. I want to start over. Can a single mama do that? Is it possible to feel…possibilities again? Like I’m more than just a vessel my admittedly terrific kids passed through? I’d like to take up space. I’d like to flail, not fail. I’d like another chance. The dance floor might not be my venue any longer, but nobody can stop a laughing, dancing 40-year-old from getting her groove on at the top of Iceland on her birthday. And who would want to?