Dancing in the Kitchen

When I was in Michigan for Thanksgiving, I stayed with David and his crew.  They had recently remodeled their house and set up an ensuite for me when I stay with them.  It’s very nice and, best of all, it’s on the first floor. I’m closer to eighty than I am seventy, so I appreciate their thoughtfulness.

After Thanksgiving dinner, and the crowd thinned out, I was one of several guys who played cards and listened to some upscale music.  Lindsay and her friends danced in the kitchen.  Lindsay had an Echo, and she tuned in a series of songs that I loved.  They danced and I listened.  It was wonderful.

I like listening to music.  I have the car radio on most of the time.  I do a lot of reminiscing while I listen, and sometimes I remember what song I was listening to and who I was with. Van Morrison’s “Gloria” reminds me of the one time I went to a dance club in Birmingham, Michigan with my Birmingham girl. We were engaged for a while. We were both out of high school when I bought her a ring, but too young to make a decision like that.

Motown reminds me of college, and the fraternity parties in Kalamazoo.  If my memory is correct, we held a lot of parties at the Crazy Horse. I think that’s the name. I know it was a barn rented for fraternity and sorority parties.  There was underage drinking, but the police never raided the place. We drank kegs of beer or bottles of Ripple.  I think the owner had an agreement with the cops.  I don’t know that; I just think it.

I was pinned to a girl during that time.  Pinning was like being engaged to be engaged.  She and I Shingalinged and Boogalooed beginning my junior year through my senior year and most of my first two years of teaching. She had a bit of a princess complex, and I knew I wouldn’t make her happy in the long run, so we just dated after she returned my pin.  My last date with her was the Saturday before Ruth and I eloped.

Ruth and I danced but not as often as I would have liked.  When we set up our first household on Kalamazoo’s Stockbridge Avenue, we danced in the kitchen.  We continued when we moved to Reycraft.  When the kids were born, we tended to them and dancing in the kitchen stopped.

When we did dance, dancing fast was never an issue, but she liked to lead so slow dancing wasn’t very smooth.  We did a dance we called the Social, but I recently learned it was an elementary form of the Bachata.  We were comfortable doing that. That’s the dance Elizabeth and I did when she got married.  We didn’t choreograph our moves, and I think BZ was a bit surprised as we made our way around the dance floor.  The song was Stevie Wonders’ Isn’t She Lovely.  Stevie wrote it for his daughter, and I danced with mine.

I bought my own Echo right after Christmas.  It sits on my kitchen counter.  I’ve closed the camera window, but it still senses my presence when I walk into the room.  I play music when I’m cooking, unloading the dishwasher or doing the laundry.  I don’t dance, but I listen to songs that I remember from my younger days.  Frank Sinatra’s My Way album was released in 1969, the same year that Ruth and I met. It plays on the Echo every day. I know all the songs and sing along.  Frank and I make quite a duet.  I can’t hit the high notes, but I know all the words.

I bought the album when it first came out.  I played it off and on for several years until Ruth and I shipped all of our albums to our musician son-in-law, Sutton, and BZ.  I haven’t heard it since until I bought the Echo.  I like the songs.  They’re easy to listen to and I like their message.  If I had my druthers, and maybe someday I will, I’d like to dance in the kitchen again.