Part of Me

I dance. It's not that I necessarily ought to run out onto the dance floor at wedding receptions with the 20- and 30-something-year-olds, but I do. And yes, I wake up the next morning thinking maybe I should have sat and talked more with "the people," but I couldn't have not danced. And only Martinelli's is involved, honest.

However, when a deejay plays a song I don't love or that sounds foreign to me (which is mostly everything written after 1980), I am able to sit it out. And those digital-ish new songs that kids jump vertically to give me a chance to sit down as well. My generation dances back and forth, not up and down.

I didn't always dance. Years ago, a family wedding was approaching for my nephew Bryan and his fiance, Karis. "You won't catch me on the dance floor," I explained to Kelley, my son's girlfriend at the time, now his wife. "I'm too self-conscious and am not that great at dancing." She gave me some wise instruction. "Watch everyone who is out there dancing. Almost everybody looks goofy. So just go out there, be goofy with everyone else, and have fun."

My husband still mostly refuses to dance, but when the song "Unforgettable" plays at a reception, he knows wherever he is in the room, that's his signal to join me on the dance floor. He holds me tight, and we sway, and for that three minutes and twelve seconds, all is well in this world.

It was fall in 1974, and my junior high school was throwing a dance. Not a get-invited-by-a boy-and-wear-a-corsage dance, just a lunchtime dance. My friends and I confessed to each other we weren't sure how to dance. So we did what every insecure adolescent girl would do: we asked a popular girl to show us how.

I felt brave approaching Kati in the locker room after gym class, asking her to show me and my friends how to dance. She kindly showed us. First the feet. Step left. Then bring your right foot to a tap towards the left. Step right. Then bring your left foot to a tap towards the right. Add a little swing with the arms, left in front, right behind, then switch, and you've got it. Over and over we practiced until these two steps became a part of us.

That junior high dance step is still a part of me. When I am dancing and run out of moves consisting mostly of choreography (if the singer is singing about living on a prayer and being halfway there, I choreograph accordingly) and of copying anyone around me who seems to have something original going on, I return to my junior high basic steps. And I picture the locker room benches, the lockers, the aisles, and the popular-but-approachable instructor teaching us to sway back and forth.

I woke up with wet eyes this morning. I woke up thinking about dancing. I woke up thinking about dancing when the deejay plays a song you disdain. The song that was never on your playlist. The song that you would never have chosen for yourself. The song that sends you running to the restroom to not have to hear it or has you thinking you must be at the wrong party entirely. The new widow has it playing at her house, as does the family ordering a hospital bed for their loved one to be comfortable living out his last days at home. The young couple leaving the hospital maternity unit to return home with empty arms.

My dad's life ended with a foreign, unpleasant song, living his last year and a half as a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. "Unbelievable," he would sometimes utter, even just mouthing the word when his ventilator would not allow him to speak. Tears would sometimes run down his cheeks, tears he was unable to wipe away himself. Yes, he said and did many inspiring things in his injured state as well, but there were times he just had to be sad and mad awhile, times he refused to join the dance for a time.

He would have turned 85 this month but died at 66. I've walked through April saying out loud, thinking to myself, praying, I suppose, "There are many 85-year-old men in this world. Why couldn't my dad have been one of them?" The question goes unanswered, but I find myself asking it again anyway, wondering why the song of my life doesn't include having parents who are still alive.

We're having a family party Monday night, of all times, because Tuesday my son Kyle's first book is to be released. Desserts, a photo booth, games, and black and yellow bee-themed decorations are in the works. We won't turn on music and clear a spot to dance, but we'll be dancing just the same, to one of those I-can't-help-but-dance tunes.

I enjoyed breakfast out with my two daughters and two daughters-in-law this week. I want my dad to see the beautiful young ladies his granddaughters have become, to meet the lovely girls my sons chose to marry, who bring even more love into our family. I want to hear him to laugh out loud at my son's writings. I want to see his eyes get wet with happy tears. I want to overhear my mom calling forty of her friends to tell them what's happening in our family.

I want them to be at the party. They won't be at the party.

When I am happy mixed with that bit of sad as we celebrate and I don't know quite how to move, I'll reach way down deep to that first song of love God ever sang over me. I will see him showing me, step left, then right. Now add the arms. And I'll dance.

It's just part of me.