Yesterday I was at a wedding for people I didn’t even know, which isn’t the place where you’d think the feeling would come. But sometimes it takes you by surprise.
It was my husband’s cousin’s wedding. And there I am at our assigned table and the dinner plates have been cleared away and the DJ calls the groomsmen up to the dance floor. And he plays the song YMCA, by the Village People. This is pretty standard wedding stuff.
Except that Dad just loved to dance to that song. And so at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs whenever that song came on he’d be out there on the dance floor throwing his arms up to spell Y-M-C-A. And Dad was a terrible dancer, but that didn’t bother him one bit.
And so there I am at this wedding for the people I don’t know and YMCA comes on and I can see Dad, all elbows and knees and a big goofy grin, and I think I might cry. But I don’t. Instead of crying I tell every person at my table, individually, about how my Dad loved this song and also what a crappy dancer he was.
P.S. Writing this post actually sent me into something of a panic. Because I know I have a picture of Dad and I dancing at a Bat Mitzvah, and it’s the perfect picture of white people as terrible yet enthusiastic dancers. But then when I went to grab the picture it wasn’t where I thought it was. So, a topic for another day. The panic of losing the few, precious keepsakes.