When Your Son Makes You Cry

He came home around 7pm this evening, just a stopping off point before he continued with the night's festivities. He was pumped with energy and the sweat from his previous activity was still fresh on his shirt, dampening his back. I looked at my now grown son and I struggle between seeing him as still young and unformed, as naive and unprepared and moving toward manhood, a man with a drivers license and a car, a college student and registered voter.

But he surprises me.

His excitement has me intrigued, and I wonder about his night as he puts me off while he changes clothes. I urge him on to hurry and he is anxious as well to share of his news.

He is a dancer. Ballroom.

He helped out a friend that night, her senior project, a dancing performance at the local senior living home. The largest in our small, rural town. It stands erect, several stories tall among the pine trees swaying around its structure. It seems to strong and invincible against the forces of nature.

But inside, there is much frailness. The people inside are growing weary. Tired.

Old.

My son gives details of his dance, the set up and size of the dance floor. Too small he says, for a proper dance. He would know, he's becoming an expert now. But they make it work and go about dancing.

A small circle of minds who have seen more in their lifetime than my son will ever see in his. Wars and depressions, great presidents and frightening world leaders, the first space shuttle and a life before television.

He cannot identify with them, his life is cushioned with all the luxuries that our modern world supplies. Cell phones and electric razors, computers and video on demand.

What could they offer to him, them who have come so far and yet have so little time left to give? Those who are frail and weak, some know not even their own name.

What can he offer to them, a young boy...a young man. Who hasn't yet lived, who knows nothing of lives harsh realities or its miracles. Who is still protected by the shelter of his parents and is relishing in his youth. What does he have that they could want?

The music started.

They danced. The waltz, the tango, the 2-step or even a fox trot. They danced, and the people watched and in watching some of them were transported. Moved to a time where they were young, in love, full of hope for the future, who knows...but in those moments they were able to connect with two young people whose only goal was to dance.

My son offered up a chance to dance for anyone interested. A rhetorical question he thought. What do they know of frame and rhythm and balance? But an offer none the less.

A woman slowly rises to her feet. My son walks over to her.

Irene.

100 years old last week.

He clasps her hand and her arm envelopes around his back and here an 18 year old boy and a 100 year old woman are partners. They find what many cannot. A piece of the past for her, a look into the future for him.

They dance a waltz, my son can feel the creak of her bones as her hand slides back and forth against his. His greatest fear that he hurts her or she somehow falls. A good boy, considerate of these things.

We don't know what Irene was thinking. Never will. But I like to think she was somehow in another place and in another time. Remembering the past, her sweetheart and the love they shared, a youthful step, so light and so effortless, she could dance for hours then.

She hums a tune, my son doesn't know what song it is. But he can see that it makes her happy and he is pleased with himself.

And I..........am pleased with him.