‘Cause when she sings I hear a symphony
And I’m swallowed in sound as it echoes through me
I’m renewed, oh how I feel like
Though autumn’s advancing, we’ll stay young, go dancing

~ from the song “Stay Young Go Dancing” by Death Cab for Cutie

Last night I watched “So You Think You Can Dance” on television and marveled at the way the young contestants moved their bodies in graceful expression to the strains of popular music.  I could not help but think about my own career as a dancer.

My mind wandered way back to a Halloween evening when I was around seven years old.  My gypsy costume was ready, complete with dangling gold hoops my mother screwed to my ear lobes.  She tied a silk scarf from her top drawer around my head and lined my eyes with a dark Mabelline eyebrow pencil.  As she and my father gathered our brood together to go trick-or-treating on Green Street, my mother asked me to run upstairs and get something she left in one of the bedrooms.  I bounded up the stairs excited beyond containment.  As I stood on the linoleumed bedroom floor, my enthusiasm reached a crescendo, and I spontaneously broke into what I believed to be a magnificent tap dance. 

“Stop that racket and get down here!” my mother yelled.

And at that one short sentence, my career as a dancer was forever ended.

My father loved to dance.  He would put jazz records on the hi-fi and dance first with my mother and then my older sister, Martha-Jean.  I watched them cover the living room floor with intricate steps and turns, patiently awaiting my turn.  Taking me in his arms, Dad would try a few steps.  But I, so eager to please, would jump ahead, or turn in the opposite direction as he. 

“Relax!” he commanded.  “Feel the music!”

It is hard to relax when you are trying too hard.  I disentwined my arms from his and sat down, cheeks burning, while he gathered up Martha-Jean again, and Two-Stepped in the other direction.

Later, when I was in eighth grade, my parents sent me to dance school where every Saturday evening pimply faced boys and girls dressed up and practiced the Waltz and Fox Trot while secretly wishing they were home watching “Man From U.N.C.L.E” on television.  I tried learning the steps, but hated the humiliation of waiting to be chosen as a partner by some sweaty handed teenage boy I didn’t know.  One Saturday, after stumbling through three minutes of Winchester Cathedral with a skinny boy who had Brylcreem dripping down his forehead, I decided that I was done with ballroom dancing. 

Fortunately for me, ballroom dancing was replaced by rock concerts and choreographed dance steps gave way to free-form bobbing in time to the beat of the drums.  I managed to figure out a way to move my body in a way that allowed me to blend in with the scenery, and when I met and married the man of my dreams, I was not unhappy to find that he was content to play in the band instead of dancing to the music.

But then there were children, and I quickly learned that if there is a baby, there is movement.  Babies loved to be rocked and jiggled, and shortly after giving birth to my first sweet child, I realized that dance had to be a part of my life.  So in the living room of our house, with nobody but a pink little newborn, I learned to dance.

Here’s the thing about babies. They think everything you do is great.  All three of my babies loved nothing more than to be scooped in my arms and waltzed around the living room. They chuckled to a Cha-cha-cha.  They were tickled with a Tango. They marveled at a Merengue.  For the next several years, whenever there was music on the stereo, they begged me to boogie.

The kids are all grown now, and the only dancing in my living room takes place on the television screen.  But early in the morning, I listen to my IPod while I put on my makeup, and every once in a while I catch myself swaying across my bedroom floor in silent familiar steps.  Watch out Fred and Ginger- Momma G’s got her groove on.