After bingo
and before dinner the music starts.
A DJ in a
bowler hat scrolls through sixty-year-old (and older) songs on an iPod,
offering commentary on each piece before it’s played. His audience calls out answers to his trivia
questions: “Glenn Miller!” “Julius
LaRosa!” “Les Brown!”
The DJ,
Randy, prods the audience to come out on the dance floor without success until
he plays “String of Pearls” by Glenn Miller.
A lone couple steps out on the dance floor tentatively as if attempting
to cross a frozen lake. Uncertainty yields
to confidence as they wrap their arms around each other and yield to the
music. They dance with the familiarity
of two people who have moved in step for more years than they can remember,
their feet touching lightly on the floor, hers following his.
Randy
announces that the next song is the best dance tune ever and begins to play “You
Belong to Me” by Jo Stafford. At least a
dozen couples scrape back their chairs from the bingo tables and slowly
converge on the dance floor, responding to a command I don’t hear.
I cannot
stop staring at them.
Moments
earlier they had been senior citizens off for a brief holiday in the Poconos,
nursing lingering disappointment over what might have been if only “B4” had
been called. But as they dance, however
gingerly, 2013 fades away and the Big Band Era takes its place. I see
these couples as they truly are. Not the
outer shell supported by orthopedic shoes and wrapped in a cardigan, but the
forever young spirit within.
I compliment
a gentleman and his wife on their dancing when they return to our table. “We’ve been doing this a long time,” he
replies with a smile. When I ask how
long, he answers, “Fifty-one years.”
The heart
keeps its own time---whether five years or five decades have passed is irrelevant
when the music starts.