The Dance

Jimmy Garoutte taught me to dance the summer I was eighteen.  I know that seems odd in this day and age, but it was a different time.  In 1967, I was newly on my own, a shy, sheltered, naive girl from the midwest, and Jimmy the first boy I had done more than share a pizza with. It was a time of innocence.

I no longer remember just how I met him, but I remember the rest. He was twenty, dark eyed, with a sly smile and a sweet disposition.  I was captured by his humor, and his gentleness.  He threatened to camp out on my doorstep if I wouldn't go out with him, and he flashed that smile, and I fell. 

Springfield was still a small town, with small town ways, and little entertainment. Jimmy would pick me up in the evenings, and I would be waiting, my hair freshly washed and smelling of Prell shampoo, and my heart beating double time. We'd take off in his old car and cruise those quiet streets, and talk.  I remember long conversations, shared laughter, and that precious time of newness. 

There was a lake at the edge of town, and it became in time, a favorite place for us. We would stop at the A & W for a soda, head the car south, and drive to the gravel parking area near the boat launch.  We talked of  work and dreams and our childhoods.  We laughed at my being so broke that I was living on beans and popcorn.  We shared our sodas and our secrets.  And then one night he asked me to dance.

Oh, I knew how to dance the current fast dances,the partnerless crazy rock and roll. But I had never had the opportunity to learn to slow dance.  I felt foolish and embarrased, but Jimmy just looked across that seat at me and opened the door.  That moment is frozen in time for me forever.  It was hot and still, and the crickets were singing in the grass. .  and Jimmy turned up the radio, came around to my door and opened it wide. He took my hand and led me out into the beams of light thrown by the headlamps.There were moths floating in the light, their powdery wings irridescent.

He put one arm around my waist, his hand warm in the small of my back, and held the other near his chest. And there in the dark, to the aching, heartbreaking voice of Johnny Rivers filling the night with "Tracks of My Tears" we danced.  In that sweet slow sway, held close, eyes closed, we danced.

It was only that.  A dance, but it was the moment that I realized that the world was about to change for me forever.  That I stood on the brink of something so foreign and yet familiar.  Something that I felt homesick for, but couldn't name.
I look back through the years, and that moment still rings clear and bright,and I can see the two of us, ageless and timeless,  and I remember Jimmy.