Thursday nights at Cabot Square are awesome. Live music from the ’50s saturates the square as a band, playing fast swing, entices the crowd to dance. This transforms the park from a place to quickly pass through, into a destination, a place to be, a place to dance with the exuberance of youth.
But only special people come. People who love to dance and do it well, or people who want to dance, but don’t mind looking clumsy, don’t mine looking uncoordinated. And of course, as always, people who just love to watch other people dance. They all have one thing in common though, a wide smile on their faces… No, it’s more than a smile, it’s pure pleasure beaming from their lips while they dance.
Step, rock — step, rock—pull your partner in, turn and spin them– then twirl and spin again. With such splendid coordination the dancers catch their partner in their arms — only to let them go and spin them away again.
I must admit, I enjoy watching more than doing. Don’t get me wrong, I love to dance, but my feet and brain seem to be on different planets; then, add to that coordinating with Claire, my wife, plus trying to make it look easy and carefree… No, it doesn’t happen. We’re now planets apart, Venus and Mars.
But we do it for a while anyway, and then I get tired and discouraged because I see young people doing it so much better, doing it with such creativity, such flair. Especially these two, they have a supreme sense of each other. They always know where the other is, and when they twirl, they always end up exactly where their partner can intercept them, hold them, then twirl them again.
Claire, who is braver and more graceful than me, dances on by herself. I stop, go to the edge and watch this couple do complicated West Coast Swing steps, pretending in my mind that I am following them, that I could do what they do, if only I had a little more practice. I am mesmerized by their lithe, energetic, and oh so synchronized dancing. You can tell that they’re not partners of the moment, they’re a couple in all senses of the word.
At the end, as we walked home, I saw them on the sidewalk up ahead, strolling arm in arm, as graceful and elegant as ever. As we caught up and walked past, I noticed his long white cane jutting out in front. I was flabbergasted. He was blind, and she, holding on to his arm, following him, was blind as well.