The Importance of Joy

And how one woman spread it everywhere.

My Grandmother’s name was Joy, and she really was. She was pure Joy.

Most of the women in my family have paid homage to her by tattooing her name on the inside of their wrists, so it’s safe to say that she left her literal mark on her younger kinfolk.

She died quite suddenly when I was only 18 months old, so she lives in my memory in story form only. I do remember my Grandad’s deathbed 10 years ago, however, as he absently danced ever so slightly under his hospital-grade blankets mere hours before his passing.

He wasn’t entirely lucid during this solo dance, but we all knew he was tapping his feet in anticipation of dancing with his Joy again after so many years apart. He’d mentioned her a few times in the hospital in those final days; he missed her so terribly even decades after she died. He was “warming up his twinkle toes,” we softly joked. He was ready to meet her for their first heavenly dance.

My grandparents were competitive ballroom dancers. They were more than that, of course: she was a housewife and mother; he, a father and draftsman. They were many things.

But they fell in love on the dancefloor. That’s where they blossomed and flourished. That’s where they were magic.

It was the early 50s, and my grandparents found themselves on a blind date at a ballroom dance.

I mean, my God. It’s so perfect. My husband and I met at a house party and there were no beautiful gowns or dapper men in suits — I think there was weed, though. And Mike’s Hard Lemonade; probably some Smirnoff Ice as well. It lacked the classy, vintage feel of ballroom dance, that’s for sure.

True love hits you like a brick sometimes. Other times it meanderingly sails in through an open window, floating along a light breeze and giving you the slightest feeling of a shift in the earth’s core. For my grandparents, it was probably a bit of both, depending on who you asked.

After less than a year of dating, they married.

Having a family took a while, for some reason. My grandmother had trouble conceiving her three children from day one. I’m glad it took them time, though, because what they did while they waited for God to deliver, was dance.

And they were so damned good at dancing.

Competitive ballroom dancing is no joke, and it was no different in the 50s.

It required hours of practice together; a pair of ballroom dancers had to trust each other implicitly and anticipate each other’s every move. They had to get along and work together with poise and grace, painting a moving piece of art with every foxtrot.

What a beautiful way to fall in love.

After they had kids, they stopped doing it competitively — it was a huge time crunch, of course, which doesn’t really work when you’re raising a family. But they still went out as their kids got older, just for fun, and danced. It was a mutual love of theirs that never disappeared, even when they stopped competing.

My Grandmother soon started to run her own dance school, where she also sewed costumes and booked venues and recitals for its students. My mom attended the school, too, and my Grandmother was thrilled to watch her daughter take up something she loved so dearly in her younger years.

She sewed so many costumes for the girls in her school. She continued sewing beautiful gowns outside of dance, too and even made my mom’s wedding dress — not to mention my mom’s six bridesmaid dresses. It was a great skill to have, especially in those days, and it wasn’t the only thing she was good at.

My Grandmother was, as I said, a housewife and mother, but she was so much more to her community. She was the “neighbourhood mother;” the mother that fed hungry kids in the area and mothered those whose own mothers weren’t around. The mother who still made Sunday roasts and cared for her family with a kind of devotion rarely seen these days.

My mom told me a story about her school days, during which she would often come home for lunch to find her house full of high school boys, all eating lunch prepared by my Grandmother, and all watching The Young and The Restless with her. It drove my mom nuts, but those boys — all of whom grew into fine young men — were all there when my Grandmother passed.

She was precious to them all.

In 1984, a bizarre and sudden tragedy changed everything.

My grandmother, the very glue that held the family together, became extremely ill — and quickly. In 3 weeks, she had drifted into a sleep that she would never wake from.

The doctors were a bit perplexed; my grandmother had encephalitis — swelling of the brain — which they determined was caused by the West Nile Virus. “A mosquito bite,” they surmised. A solitary mosquito snuffed out our family’s joy, and that diagnosis took a long time for my grandad to reconcile with.

The diagnosis that took her didn’t really matter; she was gone. It rocked my family’s world. My uncle was only 18 at the time and in desperate need of his now forever absent mother. My 24-year-old mom had 18-month-old twins and desperately needed her sounding board; her role model.

Her mom. She needed that too.

For my grandad, it hit pretty hard. He went on to live for another 30 years without his dancing partner; his life partner. He found joy in life, but he’d lost his first real joy — my grandmother.

Life went on as it absolutely must, and we talk about her often, even now, nearly 40 years later. We talk about how she was a mother to her entire community. We talk about how much she loved her family; how she endured morning sickness for the entirety of every pregnancy, and still refused to take thalidomide, as so many unsuspecting mothers did at the time, because she couldn’t be certain of its safety.

We talk about the importance of a strong yet nurturing feminine mother figure at the head of every family, a role that she took on with grace. We talk about how we have so few pictures of her because she was always the one taking them.

We talk about the dancing too — the activity that brought her and my Grandad together. The activity that made her feel beautiful and free; that led to a life of love and family.

The activity that brought her the first taste of a life of joy.

My Grandmother died young, but her life was full of joy. She found joy in her relationships and family. She found joy in her service to the community. She even found joy in sewing countless dresses and costumes for girls who, unbeknownst to her, would cherish them forever.

She understood the importance of what her name embodied, and I am trying to find that same kind of joy every day. If I’ve learned anything from my grandmother’s life and her swift departure, it’s that letting the joy of life into your day-to-day will serve you and those you love well.

And in an increasingly crazy world, we need all the joy we can get our hands on.