Just a Song and Dance Man
There was a bluegrass band playing his favorite kind of music at a house party in honor of Auntie Jane. He’d wheeled himself as close as he could get to the music room festivities, but a step kept him from going farther. He was stuck in the “talking” room, but from his vantage point he could still hear the band and watch the dancing.
I was buck-dancing with the Southern women in the family; the Yankee branch of the family calls it clogging. It’s a robust dance, none of this suavely swaying to the music without raising a sweat or mussing your hair. In buck-dancing, you raise your knees high and slam first toe then heel to the wooden floor, adding the percussion line to the music. Dad didn’t buck-dance even before he got his wheels, but he always tapped his feet and clapped his hands at the hoe-downs when we’d visit down South.
I saw Dad tapping his toe and clapping one hand against his armrest, saw a bittersweet smile. The left side of his face still droops some, turning his smiles into wry grins. And, somehow, I knew what he was thinking – the same images flaring so brightly in my mind, of father-daughter dances. Dad didn’t dance much, but he started dancing with me early, letting me step up on his toes, wrapping one short arm around his waist, the other hand grasped firmly in his, he’d waltz us around the room. My school didn’t have a father-daughter dance back then; they do, now. I envied my niece when I saw the photos of her in her lacy dress of white, my brother in his suit, headed off to their dance.
Dad didn’t dance much. My mom had always liked to dance, and I think sometimes she envied me.
Dad danced with me at my wedding with tears in his eyes. He whispered in my ear, “You’ll always be my little girl.”
We’d dance one dance at cousins’ weddings, and at Mom and Dad’s 40thanniversary party.
Dad never did dance much, but wheeled up to that step, leaning forward in his chair so he might see Unka Jim cuttin’ it up and making a ruckus with the Southern ladies in the family, I knew he wanted to dance, now. I held out my hand to him, and he reached out with his right to grasp it. We swung arms. This time, it was me doing all the leg work, his feet were stepped up on the footrests of his wheelchair. He’d have preferred I was still riding along on his toes.
He was swinging his arms and gently pulling me forward then easing me back. When I ducked under his outstretched arm the first time, his grin lit up his face. From then on, it was forward-back, forward-back, forward-back, twirl! He was leading the dance, lifting my arm higher each time. The ladies in the talking room smiled indulgently. When the song ended, we all applauded.
The very next song was “I’ll Fly Away.” Dad never did sing much, but he liked to listen to country music and bluegrass. And he was familiar with this song. It’s one of the songs I sing to him each night before he goes to sleep. I’m not always there in the make-shift bedroom set up where our music room used to be. His bedroom is upstairs. He says he’ll be back up there one day. For now, his bed is pushed up against the wall where our red upright piano sat. Crowding into the space where our thirdhand, got-it-cheap, Hammond B-3 organ used to sit. I never got very good on the organ, though got good enough to play at church services some. But I could tear that piano up. That room is filled with memories of music, the ghosts of songs still whispering in the air.
I sing to him every night, though I’m not always there in the make-shift bedroom. I made him a tape a year or two ago, me singing his favorite hymns and spirituals, with a few good-old country songs tossed in. It’s mostly me singing, but on a track or two my husband’s playing guitar. I don’t sing every day, like I used to, and a cappella is tough without lots of practice. So sometimes my voice changes key in the middle of a song, but he’d asked for some tough ones: “Amazing Grace,” “One Day at a Time,” “How Great Thou Art.”
“Amazing Grace” isn’t that hard, except when I stand at his bedside, singing harmonies to the tape I made, standing there singing as he cries at the words. “One Day at a Time” is a tear-jerker for him, too, as it talks about how life is hard, but somehow God will help you through, if you take it just one day at a time. It’s got some high notes, and it’s hard to hit high notes when your throat is clogged with unshed tears.
“How Great Thou Art?” That’s a challenge even for pros. It’s a big, dramatic, Pavarotti, diva kind of song, if you sing it as it wants to be sung, rather than rushing through it with a slight lilt that ignores the power of the music and the power of the words. I gave it my best diva, dramatic rendition in a cappella, and I cry just about every time I sing along with that song on the tape, because Dad has whispered to me on several of those nights, as I stood there leaning against the safety rail of his hospital-style bed, stood there in the near dark with just the low glow of the night-light setting off his bedside lamp, stood there as he whispered to me he wants me to sing “How Great Thou Art” at his funeral.
Mom says he cries and sings to the tape each night, and it helps him release the frustration of being trapped all day in a body that betrayed him. He tries not to cry when I’m there singing in person, and I try not to cry, too.
He whispers sweet thoughts between the songs: “I’m so proud of you.” And whispers To-Do lists: “Will you trim back the lilac tree, because your mom can’t see around it when she goes to pull the van out?” And because, “You’ll always be my little girl,” he also whispers protective-daddy thoughts: “Don’t walk alone after dark in Chicago. Make sure you’re inside before the sun goes down, and always lock your doors.”
Slowly the tape moves past those tough, tearful hymns, to the country songs, like “I’ll Fly Away,” which is about how God will rescue all His children from their mortal bodies, and take them home to Heaven, but this has a bluegrass swing, so it can’t be sung somber. Dad and I sing that one every night, even when I’m in Chicago rather than at his bedside.
And there that bluegrass band was, at the house party in honor of Auntie Jane, playing oursong. And though I was breathless, Dad and I danced. And though I was breathless, Dad and I sang. Dad sang every word. Not in a quiet whisper, where I’d have to lean my ear close to his mouth to hear. No! He sang every word, belted it out, as loud as I’ve ever heard him speak since that awful August afternoon when he had his massive stroke as he was getting all dressed up in a suit to take Mom out for their wedding anniversary; when a romantic dinner at the Hotel Nauvoo restaurant was traded in for a helicopter ride to the University Hospitals.
He belted that song out, every single word, and I so wanted to go grab a microphone from the band and string it across the dancing room, out to the enclosed porch, and let my daddy shine. I wanted the whole world to hear him sing.
My dad; he’s just a song and dance man.
The next day, after I’d arrived home in Chicago, I called my mom, ’cause Dad had whispered to me, “Be sure to call us when you get home, so we’ll know you got home safe.” Dad was napping in his chair, and Mom said to me, “Your dad wrote you a letter last night after we got home. I meant to give it to you this morning, but I can read it to you now, if you’ve got time.”
I had time.
It said a few different things. It’s hard for Dad to write letters, but he works hard at it, and so crams a variety of thoughts into them. It said a few different things. But mostly what it said was: “Dear Tina. Thank you for the dance.”