Music and Dance

...let me dance for you

oh, please, let me dance for you

because it is the only thing I know to do

Last night I spoke to a friend of mine who not too long ago became a widow.  She and her husband had been married or involved with one another since she was 13 years old, almost 50 years ago.  A marriagethat had its share of good times and bad.  While the marriage wasn't particularly satisfying to her, nevertheless, she misses the partner with whom she shared so many years, so much of herself that was private between them and which no other person can share.  Truly, no matter what happens, that man can never be replaced in her life.  

I have heard marriage described as a dance.  We dance and dance and finally, someone comes along whose dance matches ours.  We dance together for a time, eventually developing intricate steps that only the partner with whom we created the steps know how to do.  When a dance partner leaves, for whatever reason, we are left to try to dance alone, the intricate steps of our dance with no partner who knows them, to match them, to waltz with us.

All relationships, indeed, are a dance, including reunion.  We each dance around the edges of the our truths, and believe that we will move to more rhythmic steps as time progresses.  Sometimes one partner leads for a while and then we change so that the other partner does.  Hopefully we learn the intricate steps and find lovely new dances that we create together. .Sometimes they do, but often we both keep dancing the steps with which we are familiar.

The dance of reunion sometimes includes long graceful waltzes, slow minuets, but, more often there are, instead, herky-jerky hiphop, increasingly frenetic tribal dances and then, when exhaustion sets in, long breaks, when complete silence is the standard.  The orchestra must rest, the parties must rest and during the silences they heal.

Mothers wish that they could get their babies back. We want them so badly, we long for the infant that was so rudely and cruelly removed from our wombs and from our arms.  We dream of the infant, crying for his mother, and yet, we are met by a grown man or woman, not the infant we lost and long for.

Adoptees have spent their lives imagining their mothers, too.  They hold in their child's imagination, a princess, a fairy queen, an angel.  What they find at the end of their search is a woman. Not a mythical being, but an every day woman with flaws in her face, her body and her character.  A full grown woman who, for better or worse, is a composite of all her experiences both good and bad.   That must be shocking, possbily too shocking for some to overcome. 

When you are dancing solo, there is no one to care if you decide to sit out a set or two or even more.  The time you waste is yours.  You set your own tempo and pick your own steps, not concerned that the partner you wish for may not be able to keep up, not match your steps or your tempo or your rhythm.

When you are dancing in a relationship there is another person whose time you are wasting.  While some wait, and sit out dance after dance, the mother partners music is slowing.  Time, which at one time seemed endless and long, now is relentlessly, endlessly ticking away our life's music.  Time is not our friend and never was.  We anxiously watch it relentlessly ticking,  knowing that we are aging and our dancing days are fewer and fewer.  We pray that our children will recognize that our steps are slowing and our graceful pirouettes are behind us.  We do more swaying, hoping that our rhythm is simple enough to allow our partner to match us.

The dancers come more slowly to the dance floor each time, with shorter sets, slower dances and longer breaks in between, until eventually we no longer come to the dance floor, and the dancers remaining must dance alone.