It wasn’t just in the high school band that we marched along to the same drummers. There was a rhythm to the students, perhaps even the town. We dressed in the same colors, supporting the same team. Traveling on the same buses, singing the same songs.

There was a small skip that we learned when marching in the parades. If you got out of step, you just did this little hop, and right back in you fell. Aligned with all the others dressed in red and black.

When I first went to college, the noise was almost deafening. So many different colors drumming. And I fumbled and skipped and fell in and out of line. But everyone was. It was the time for tripping. For learning.

It was only when I started to put my words and paintings together, that it became so joyful, so light — this beat — no longer a banging of sticks, but a flapping of wings. The most gentle beat — in my own colors, my own heart. Pa-rup-a-pum-pum.

That’s not to say I can’t get thrown off. Out of step. Life will do that. But I know the little “skips” that realign me with myself. I think we all do. I hope we all do.

I pulled a tiny chocolate drum out of my Advent calendar this morning. I hear it. I feel it, my rhythm. I smile, right in time, and think, today, my heart is going to lead me, and one way or another, I am going to fly.