Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night and the rain is pouring like all the possibilities of life in my mind, I think about that summer that we danced nearly every night until 2 a.m. … the summer that was a whirl of spins and kicks in white t-shirts and Chuck Taylors dancing in a crowded basement room, the high windows wide open to let in the full summer air as our sweat dripped onto the broken tile dance floor. We danced until our feet were done, and then went out to eat our 3 a.m. donuts. We stood in dewy fields watching meteor showers. And one night we danced from dusk until dawn, dancing the sun down and then up again…
The pouring rain can remind me of that summer. And other times it reminds me of a sleepless night before I started college and found myself lying in a stream of Philadelphia streetlight, yellow streaked on the white hotel comforter with shadows of rain trailing down the hotel window pane. And the light and the sounds and the busyness of the city night outside my window were the possibilities of life turning over in my mind and I was afraid to walk through the door to college and leave other possibilities behind, and so I started writing a list, just a list to remind me of all the dreams I had and to never tell myself no and to hold it all, if possible, and not just thoughtlessly or safely settle into convention…
But then too the pouring rain at night can send my thoughts rushing back to a small cottage of yellow light and a door cracked open to show my grandma lying so small and tired in between the sheets on the bed in that small room…and, how do you live?
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My great grandmother lived until she was 92. She used to play the ukulele and dance the Charleston and that summer of dancing, my sister and I relished the chance to show my her some of the new swing dancing moves we’d learned. So we twirled and kicked and giggled in the small space of my grandparent’s living room, our socks getting caught up on the worn green carpet. My great-grandmother laughed and clapped her hands and said, “If I were your age again, I would never miss a dance.”
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“Never miss a dance.”
When I’m afraid to do something, that’s what I tell myself. Then I do it. Or at least that is what I try to do with the things I really want in life. Because how else do you live? In the rain and all the drops it brings?
Never miss a dance.
For I have never at the break of dawn regretted that I danced too much.