Pretty Girls Dancing (all in a row)

At Sierra's wedding a couple weeks ago, my mother took down the house with her Saturday Night moves.

My mother, who in her later years is a more reserved woman than I knew her to be when I was a child, told me once that if she could do what she wanted, she would like to sing and play (guitar, piano, mandolin... many instruments -- she can play them all) on stage. She and her family -- all musicians and singers -- are all quite entertaining people and they often get together and have what they call music parties.

Isn't it the truth that sometimes a person wishes she could have an admirer...? Someone could admire how you do this or that and what you say and think. Someone could be looking at you with wonder all the time. And it would just be honest astonishment at how great you are all the time. They would completely overlook you when you were ignorant or stupid or slow or incapable or nonsensical or hysterical or ugly or awkward or just plain wrong-wrong-wrong.

But the truth is no one really gives much thought to another person. Not really. There isn't time. There isn't energy to go around all the time admiring someone. It's too exhausting. It's too much effort. It's too taxing. It's too boring.

It's not out of meanness that we don't pay enough attention to our friends and family and those we love. It's not even out of apathy. It's just because we're too exhausted with having to get up and go and come back and get ready to get up again.

That being said: I liked seeing my mother in such a joyful state. I liked seeing her two-stepping and people admiring and seeing her as she is: cool. I liked seeing her jig for a group of 20-somethings who cheered her to high heaven. I liked seeing her dancing and then worrying if she "needed to go up front at church tomorrow because I'm dancing, ha ha ha!"

I say, if you're gonna go up front, do it when you're dancing and let everybody see. Same thing, even if you're at church.

Love, d.