“We’re not dancers.” explained my mother straightforwardly. “We, meaning our people – we just don’t dance. I don’t really have an explanation for it. We’ve always enjoyed music and having a laugh with friends but we just never really organized an actual ‘dance-dance’ I guess.”
My mother shrugged her shoulders as she held both her hands up and made a blinking quotation mark sign at the “dance-dance” reference.
She closed her eyes and let her head roll backwards: “We’ve always liked dancing though – did you know that? Gosh, at weddings, we’d all dance… my sisters and I, my mom and dad… people that weren’t exactly accustomed to the sort of thing. There weren’t many drinkers in our family so when we had big get-togethers, like the weddings, and there would be dancing it would be just a big disarray of unrelaxed Littlerock suburbians trying their best to have a good time doing something they thought they ought not be doing!”
Mom laughed at the nostalgic images in her head unseen by me.
“When I was about fourteen or fifteen I went and stayed with a girlfriend of mind down in Rowell. Her folks took us to this big county to-do… one of them things they put on for planting season or harvesting season of for no real season at all I guess. My gal friend and I wore these matching light blue linen dresses with white laces around the hem and up the front like this…”
My mother placed her two index fingers on her belly and drew a Y-shape up her chest and around her neck.
“It was in some old county hall run by the county’s Chambers of Commerce of some such group. There was a live fiddle band and a step-caller and a big long table with a punch bowl and pies just like in the movies.” She laughed again. “It smelled old, like wood, and wallpaper. My girlfriend taught me how to do the steps, continuously reminding me that I was ‘all left feet’!”
“Gosh we danced all night long it seemed – we’d go in and dance for a half-an-hour or so then we’d go outside and rest in the cool country air. It was so much different than Littlerock’s air you know; it was sweet and forgiving on the lungs. I remember we pulled these big cattails from a creek across the way and chased the boys with them, a quest for attention I suppose.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that weekend and more specifically dancing that evening. I’ll never forget the piles upon piles of hats stacked up on a table near the front doors of the halls representing the number of men that were there. I’ll never forget giggling at the dancing cowpokes with their sun burnt cheeks and hands chapped from splitting rail or hauling hay or something.”
She held her hands out in front of her and looked down at them and said paragraphs of words without utterance.
She wished she could dance but then again we were not dancers.
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