Free Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd Page A

about myself that I didn’t know, don’t want to know.
    I glance at my mother unable to form any of this into words.
    I haven’t done the things Dr. Gergel suggested because I’m afraid—okay, I gave up. I tell myself that studying ancient Greek history in graduate school is my road-not-taken thing, so get over it. But there have been times lately when I’ve asked myself: Is a person meant to do only one thing in this life? What if I leapt at that road too fast? Should my love of Greece translate into a career? And if not, what do I do with that love? I don’t know where this devil’s advocate voice comes from or why I wonder about these things when I still feel so attached to the dream.
    Mom reaches for the carafe of water, fills her glass and then mine. And another thing, I want to tell her, it was a big mistake for me to enroll in graduate school in American history, but I didn’t know what else to do, and I had to do something.
    I don’t say any of that either.
    There’s nothing in our history to make me believe my mother would respond to me as if I were a disappointment. She didn’t do it when I was ten and quit piano. And not when I forfeited a full college scholarship my freshman year to transfer to the school I’d really wanted to go to all along. My heart starts to jog the second I think about the school switch.
    I had been miserable that first semester of college, but I’d stifled that, too. For four months. How do you tell your parents you want to give up a four-year academic scholarship worth a zillion dollars in pursuit of your own unreasoned happiness? At the end of Christmas break, Mom found me sitting on my bed next to my open suitcase, crying. That’s when I finally told her, explaining the obvious—that what I wanted was selfish and insensible. She surprised me by saying the sensible thing would be listening to my heart. Within two weeks I was enrolled at Columbia College, the school I had wanted to attend.
    This was so like my mother. She had a generous spirit, but it wasn’t only that. It was the respect she had for feelings, how she believed it was inimical to the soul to deny them. I’ve watched her follow her own heart countless times in her life, most recently when she convinced Dad they should leave their home of twenty-two years and move to Charleston. I feel a little cheated out of that gene.
    I turn and look at her, wondering what I’m so afraid of now. “What?” she says. “What is it?”
    The music kicks up again and I shake my head. “Nothing,” I mouth.
    Six dancers—three men and three women—move across the stage, holding hands and forming a circle. The men wear foustanellas with white wool tights underneath, sashes, vests, and red clogs with big black pom-poms on the toes. They take turns leaping into the air from a crouching position, kicking one leg and slapping their ankles. Each time, the crowd shouts, “Hey!”
    This is the men’s show.
    Suddenly the dancers fan out into the dining room. My stomachache returns. I know what is about to happen— audience participation .
    One of the female dancers pulls a man, who looks about seventy-five, out of his chair onto the stage. He makes a small show of resisting, then throws up his hands in a what-the-hell gesture.
    Everyone laughs. The troupe pulls others from their seats—a teenage girl, a forty-something man. I hold my camera up to my face and stare at the scene through the tiny glass square. Then the square goes black. I lower the camera to find one of the dancers leaning over me, holding out his hand. He is asking me to join the others.
    It’s as if my fear of this very thing has turned on me and summoned him over. His face is sweating. He smiles at me.
    I can’t move. I want to want to.
    I shake my head. “No.”
    He looks at me like no one has ever turned him down before.
    It’s not you, it’s me , I want to tell him.
    He moves on to another girl with long brown hair. I pick up my camera. Through the lens