LIFE & LOVE

This Kitchen Is For Dancing!

My partner and his Sis, still dancing through life, together

It’s happened again.

We were almost out the door, but then she remembers.

“Wait,” she exclaims. “I didn’t get my dance.”

Then my partner Eddie smirks, relents, and walks back towards his big sis.

He’s a good sport, enjoying it just as much as she does.

I have to smile.

They carefully select a song with the right beat — it has to have the right beat — and they crank it up. They count off together, then glide across the floor, jig across the kitchen or bounce around the family room, cutting a rug in unison.

And she’s all smiles. All these decades later, she’s still getting her wish, getting her precious dance with her little brother.

I met my life partner Eddie on a dance floor.

How many people can say that nowadays? I even wrote about it here, in one of my favorite stories.

Eddie lived a full career as a professional dancer on Broadway, in musical theater tours, TV variety shows, Vegas diva acts, movies and commercials. I guess I’ll have to write about it at some point. He started training at a late age for a dancer, so many ask, “How did you becomes so good, so quickly?”

“My family was always dancing in the house or in the front yard when I was a kid. It was my mother, Bobbe, who taught me to swing dance and it just stuck” he responded.

Here’s the evidence. Check out the cool Mustang in the driveway.

His mama may have been the first teacher, but it was his big sister and fierce protector Tookie (rhymes with spooky), who kept the dancing going through the years, as the two siblings spent pre-teen and teen years making up dances together to the song “Tequila” and others, imagining audiences.

So it’s been Tookie and Eddie, an unbreakable bond and partnership of fun through the years, with one favorite activity being dance.

Below is an awesome pic of the two from the young-adult years — it’s like channeling a magazine ad for Kool Cigarettes in the ‘70’s.

It can be a two-step to a Linda Ronstadt tune or an old 40’s official swing. It might be a Garth Brooks classic, or a country line dance to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” but it’s Tookie’s absolute favorite way to spend time with her once-pro-dancer brother.

And I don’t blame her — the man can move and he can lead!

In the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, Ed and Took occasionally dressed up and frequented country bars together, two-stepping, twirling and waltzing, with many bar-goers no doubt assuming “that husband and wife over there are real good.”

I still remember the first birthday party gathering after my dancer beau and I started dating. The music came on, big sis made her request and suddenly we were witnessing a type of uninhibited fun I’d never witnessed in my own home, growing up.

The smiles are contagious — the giggles and the collaborations are there as they re-learn a forgotten trick step. The negotiations as they adapt to dancing in tennis shoes on living room carpet.

It’s love. It’s infectious. And I’m always pleased to whip out the camera to capture another moment in time, no matter the decade.

But there’s just something about the kitchen.

The kitchen is the heart of the home, and the saying, No matter where I serve my guests, they seem to like my kitchen best always rings true. The same can be said for these two. On the linoleum or tile it’s just easier to slide, spin and implement your very best swing-dance moves.

One Thanksgiving I arrived super late after an all day catering shift at a wealthy client’s home, and it warmed my heart to find brother and sister in her small galley kitchen, recalling and reworking the steps to a favorite line dance to The Tractors’ “Baby Likes To Rock It.”

Do you have any dance traditions in your family?

Europeans and Central/South Americans certainly tend to have public displays of dance more often in their cultures.

Picture proud Greek men, handsome swarthy Spaniard guys and Argentinian gents showcasing their prowess. There’s no cultural taboo, no hesitation to proudly dance, no ridiculous perceived threat to their masculinity in having power and grace.

But maybe I’m overthinking it. Who knows? Maybe there are a bunch of Americans secretly dancing the nights away in backyards, kitchens, church halls and living rooms across the nation.

In recent years, life changes and transitions have added many physical miles between this beloved brother and sister pair, but the traditions continue, and I couldn’t help but smile at the plaque placed carefully and not-so-subtly in Tookie’s new kitchen.

I’m sure many of you ladies can relate. When you finally find a man who’s a good dancer, and willing to dance with you, you don’t take it lightly, and you take every opportunity to make sure you’re getting your dance on.

Life didn’t gift me with a biological sister, just a younger brother, so it’s been a sometimes-envious joy to witness this dynamic duo dancing through life together, through the years and through the decades.

What a gift to have a connection like that (and the amazing genetics too!)

But I’m happy to say Tookie has firmly adopted me. I’m now also her “little bro” and she is my Big Sis, my Ms. Took, the female presence that is always worrying and looking out for me as well now.

We love our Tookie visits, but the goodbyes are often hard. As we closed out our most recent Colorado jaunt, curbside at the airport, unloading luggage from the car, she suddenly realized her error when she calls, “Oh no, we never got in a dance this time!”

And in that moment, I kid you not - at 6:30 in the morning, right there in the loading-passenger-only white zone at Colorado Springs Airport — I witnessed the Tookie and Eddie Show one more time.

Cars zipped by. A few people gawked.

But it didn’t matter. It was time for their dance.

Life is hard, folks. Find your people and don’t ever forget…. to dance.

Other pieces by Joe Guay - Dispatches From the Guay Life! to enjoy —

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