Imagine. My mother enters. Quick, run into her outstretched arms … She lifts me above her head. I am six, seven, eleven. Higher. Higher still. I am locked inside her gaze. Suddenly, she lets me down gently, places my right hand on her quivering shoulder, my left hand around her skinny waist. We glide like skaters on fresh ice; one two three, one two three, one two three. So old-fashioned … Beat changes. Lindy… and a one two one two three four, one two one two three four, and on and on … and …
Exhausted, we sit down.
… Our dance is over.
She reaches for a pack of Camels hidden inside her polyester, lime-green housecoat. How she loves polyester.
‘You can’t smoke in here,’ say I.
‘Why not?’ asks she innocently.
‘There are rules.’
‘Like dancing.’ She lights up a cigarette.
‘Not good for you.’
My mother shakes her head in despair, looks at the beige walls, lifts up her right foot, rests it on her left thigh, like a child about to tie her shoe for the first time. She snuffs out the cigarette on the bottom of her pink and grey fuzzy mule, flicks the butt across the room. She stands. The unspoken. Who leads? Who follows? She leads. I follow. And so it goes … Our eternal dance …
I prefer the slow dance. This is not completely true. Depends … Age, place, time. History… It is always about history.