My husband is dancing.
A moment ago I stood about where he is now, hovering on the edge of the action like a middle-schooler desperate to be included. The music had begun. The dancers had gathered. Someone mentioned river dancing, so I was ready to queue up with the crowd and learn something new. But this was not a lesson for beginners; it was a contest. Ten dancers lined up on a makeshift stage, poised to compete for a prize. This was a show with consequences. Suddenly intimidated, I moved to the outer orbit of the crowd and watched, expecting Bill to do the same. He is, after all, an introvert.
Unlike me, the raging extrovert, Bill doesn’t fear exclusion. At times he actually seeks it out. If he fears anything, it is exhibitionism. Which makes the jig—yes, a jig—he is dancing at present quite alarming. It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and apparently Bill’s idea of how leprechauns dance is this to twirl—yes, twirl—with one index finger pointing at the top of your head. I’m wondering if he just had a stroke. Or a lobotomy. Who is this man?
And he looks so proud of himself. No, not proud, just content that now, at this moment and in this place—this very public place—he is dancing. We are at a pool party in the courtyard of an apartment complex. Our son and daughter-in-law work for an apartment ministry, and they are in charge of it all tonight: the food, the games, and, now, the dance contest. Bill can’t win, you know, nepotism and all that. But he is dancing anyway.
How forcefully can I express the wonder of this moment? May I tell of the countless wedding receptions we’ve attended where Bill let his shyness get the best of him and refused to dance? May I tell of the times when we did indeed dance—trying to do it correctly—and those attempts became mini-conflicts in our marriage? Our combined embarrassment produced an exponential awkwardness, not because we couldn’t dance, but because we couldn’t loosen up enough to enjoy it anyway.
From Jordan Almonds to the Jig
I notice those couples at wedding receptions now. The ones where the wife looks longingly at the dance floor and the husband sulks. It’s subtle, but the longing and the sulking are unmistakable. Dancing says romance to a wife, or lack thereof. To a husband it says adequacy, or lack thereof. She thinks, What’s so hard about this? He thinks, Why would I make a fool of myself in the center of a room where people might, well, see?
Now may I tell of the night almost two decades ago when we spent the evening sitting at a linen-covered table, munching on pastel Jordan almonds, and never made it to the dance floor? I didn’t notice the faint sulk on Bill’s face till it was almost time to go. I guess I thought we were officially over it. I guess I thought it didn’t matter so much anymore. We mattered, but dancing didn’t. I assured him—sincerely—that I wasn’t longing for a dance, even if we just stood there and move back and forth like a ticking metronome.
Nevertheless, Bill drove home angry with himself that night and determined to never sit on the sidelines again. In his mind, not dancing translated into a kind of failure. Thus dancing became a metaphor for courage.
After that night dancing got fun. We still stink at it, but we enjoy it. It’s mighty convenient for us that dancing these days is a mixed-bag genre. Compare the moves on today’s dance floor to the precision of a Jane Austen ball or the interlocking rhythm of the Virginia reel. It’s like placing a Jackson Pollack next to a Rembrandt. Today’s dancing is vague. Yesterday’s was exact. For the dance-impaired, this is a relief. Sure there are those dance-savants we watch a bit wistfully who make it look easy. Sure, there are the reality shows that remind us it’s not. But the glob of people who populate the parquet at most clubs or wedding receptions today just bounce around like so many puppies begging to go outside.
Puppy-dancing, that’s what we’re good at now. No one notices us (they never did back when we were self-conscious either), and we just do our thing. We aren’t coordinated, but we do coordinate, as in fit together. It’s an excuse to gaze into each other’s eyes, a rhythmic respite from the rest of life. Add music, sway a little, and it’s magic.
Another Time, Another Place
Sometime between the night Bill decided to declare war on non-dancing and the next chance we had to dance he had a massive heart attack. He was old enough to have danced for a slew of years, but far too young for a heart attack.
While our entire world imploded around us, my mom advised me that our kids would need to keep their routines as intact as possible. They would need to keep moving while Bill and I froze in time. Now, that’s a trick. But right away I had opportunities to give our kids the normalcy they needed. A few hours after getting to our county hospital, I walked out of the ER with the doctor, the nurse, and the helicopter pilot to the roof and said goodbye to Bill as they slid his stretcher on board. Goodbye and “don’t die.”
Then I drove the five minutes home to check on the boys before heading out with two friends for the two hour drive to the bigger, better hospital where the helicopter would have already deposited Bill on another roof. People were everywhere in our house. A college student, one of the guys who’d been playing basketball with Bill when his plummeting heart rate sent him to the floor, showed up looking forlorn and asking what he could do. I’m not sure why this occurred to me, but I remembered my promise that morning to take Stephen to Wal-Mart in the afternoon to spend his four-year-old birthday money. Would he take him for me?
Stephen remembers that shopping trip. Just like all the boys remember the cool video gaming station at the Ronald McDonald house in Danville, Pennsylvania, where they stayed when they came to visit their dad. And the elevators they rode during that visit. (There were zero elevators in our small town except at the hospital.) Other people provided big doses of normalcy, while Bill—simply by virtue of being hospitalized—provided some fun.
Three days into a ten-day intensive care stint, I started thinking ahead. Bill still could not lift his head. He had not gotten out of bed once. His heart was damaged. And nobody told me what that meant. Was he going to make it? Would he be disabled in some way for the rest of his life? What was his recalibrated life expectancy? To some, my questions may seem absurd, but you’re not exactly prepared for your husband to have a heart attack when he’s 38. You don’t have any friends your age to compare notes with.
On the fourth morning, as I got dressed in my room at the Ronald McDonald house, I decided I would ask the doctor about this. Doctors are everywhere in ICU’s, so I knew I’d have plenty of opportunities. But then I started to imagine my end of the conversation. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t edit my hysterical blubbering out of that picture. I realized I was terrified, in a haunting déjà vu, that Bill was going to die. (Fifteen years earlier he’d had cancer, and we eventually learned the radiation from his cancer treatment caused his heart attack.) Maybe he would not die right then—although that prospect was certainly frightening—but way before his time. I prayed some more, and sensed that I should not even ask yet, not until I had wrestled with God over my fear. I had already wrestled the fear and lost. I needed to get God in a headlock and beg him for some answers for the deepest fear in my soul. Then, I thought, I could talk to a doctor. Because, in the end, what do they know anyway?
Saturday, one week later. Bill was still in the ICU, but out of the woods for the time being. I had not yet asked a doctor my question, which I had distilled into, “Is it possible that Bill will one day see his grandchildren?”
That Saturday Bill was supposed to do a wedding. A pastor friend from another town nearby offered to do the ceremony, but the couple asked him to do it word for word the way Bill would have. Which is why I decided I couldn’t handle attending the wedding. But Bill and others prevailed on me to at least go to the reception. So, shell-shocked, I went.
A program I found folded and forgotten on a bathroom counter in the church fellowship hall said the ceremony was dedicated to Bill. I hovered around the dance floor and talked to people in that vague way you do when your brain is two hours away by a hospital bed in a glassed-in ICU room. I must have had a lonely, lost look on my face. An older lady sidled up to me and tried to engage me in conversation. I wanted to say, “Do you know who I am? I’m the one whose husband had the heart attack last week. Now leave me alone.”
Instead, I managed a polite monosyllable or two.
“You see that man out there making a fool of himself of the dance floor?” she asked in a way that tells me he is her fool, and she’s proud of him.
I looked over and saw a tall man whose face was probably always ruddy, but was tomato red now from his loosened tie to the top of his glistening bald head. He was sweating and flailing his arms in some sort of monkey dance with a cute young girl.
“That’s our other granddaughter,” she chuckled, and I deduced that the lady was the bride’s grandmother.
I nodded and thought about how I was going to say goodbye to the newlyweds and make my exit when she added, “He’s 76 years old, can you believe it? He had a heart attack when he was 38. Just look at him now.”
She did not know me or our story. I’m sure of it. But God knows every offhand word spoken at every wedding reception. I did not take it to mean Bill would live to exactly 76 years old, although that would not be long enough for me. I took it to mean God sees and hears. And in his seeing and his hearing is a kind of practical love that gives these great little words of encouragement when we need them most. I drank them in like a perfect wedding punch, not too sweet and maybe even spiked with a splash of something special.
Well, Bill has seen his grandchildren. They call him Chief, and he is a fun, fit granddad who, when asked about his health these days, says, “Today, I’m great!” Because there’s no guarantee on tomorrow.
Less than a year after Bill’s heart attack he did a wedding in Philadelphia where there was an amazing band at the reception. And we danced and danced and danced.
And I wonder.
Might almost dying—in Bill’s case, a second time—make you less worried about something as basic as embarrassment on the dance floor or anywhere else, for that matter? Probably so. If that can be true, what other chains might almost dying break? And because death is inevitable for each of us, why aren’t we more free?
The Winner of the Contest
But this, this pool party madness, this goes beyond feeling confident enough to dance in public. It’s outright showmanship.
Bill has made it to the final three. Our son announces the next level of the dance-off and asks the DJ to change up the music. Bill grins in anticipation. My daughter-in-law and I are hugging each other and laughing. What’s gotten into him? we both wonder.
I am lost in the grin on his face… when I can catch it as he rotates in and out of my view. Normally, I would be swaying in time with the dancers on stage. Church—teeth-rattling rock worship in church—has taught me to move with music wherever I am. (What better place to learn that than in the middle of adoration and amazing, amazing grace?)
But I am frozen in admiration. I love this man.
Bill and I have been to enough weddings to be familiar with current music. We even know the few moves associated with some of the staples. But we depend on other’s feet to remind us. I mean we hardly look up during the complicated parts. Bill acknowledges The Cupid Shuffle with a look of recognition. And then it all falls apart. Shuffle is exactly what he does. To the right. To the left. Or something like that. The inevitable happens and he’s eliminated. It’s down to two dancers.
He joins me on the periphery of the crowd, smiling and sweating and ready to cheer for the two remaining dancers. Both are impressive. One, from India, does a kind of sultry windmill with her arms. The other, the ultimate winner because her friends cheer the loudest, appears double-jointed in her knees and elbows.
Now is where I might point out what I am sure is Bill’s underlying purpose for this public display of boogie-down. His motion has a mission, right? I suspect it does. He’s turning water to wine, doing his part to add flavor. He joined the contest as a kind of Pied Piper, nobly competing so that others would follow suit. Or, depending on how you look at it, he threw himself under the bus. Committed hari-kari on the dance floor. Because this is certainly not within the boundaries of his comfort zone.
Comfort zone? Tonight Bill has obliterated his. The raw courage of it all is staggering. For the naturally uninhibited, this may seem a small feat. But I know him. He prizes safety in social situations. Clearly, he prizes conquering his own fears even more. I happen to love his reticence, his careful way of speaking and acting. I think it displays a God-given propensity for wisdom and sensitivity to others. But Bill says there are times when his reserve becomes an enemy, handcuffing him to a chair when he needs to be up and on his feet. His objectivity—that rare ability to stand apart—keeps him removed when he needs to engage. Who knew this enemy could be vanquished simply by dancing?
But, tonight—on this gleeful night—I don’t care about his motives. I’ve had too much fun watching him from the sidelines.
