We have danced on Whidbey Island and throughout the Seattle area at several dance halls and danced countless times in our lovely island home set in the middle of five acres of woods.
We did a dance performance in front of about 250 people to big band tunes for a old fashioned 1946 Radio Show. It was a benefit for the local public radio station.
We danced on our engagement weekend in Seattle when Dan asked me to marry him in the lush garden under the Space Needle.
We danced in Mom and Dad’s assisted living home at The Springs in East Mesa, where Dad married us and Mom sang at our wedding. We danced on our wedding night at our favorite restaurant, Serrano’s, as Mom and Dad watched us.
We danced in my childhood home in Normandy Park and my parents joined in and danced with us.
We danced on our honeymoon at Disney World in the streets at Downtown Disney, and when we went to Savannah with Emily we danced in a quaint restaurant courtyard. We danced on a riverboat in New Orleans on a cruise up the Mississippi River. We danced several times on a lovely dinner dance cruise in Seattle’s Elliot Bay and watched the sun set behind the Olympic Mountains as we danced.
We danced every night in the ballroom during our fifth anniversary trip on the cruise ship from Seattle to Alaska and back home again. We had the dance floor to ourselves and this was the highlight of our Alaskan cruise! At our request the One Love Band played “I’m Yours” and “Lady in Red”. Then they played a song we had never heard, and we danced to one of our now all time favorite songs, “I Want to Wake Up With You.”
On our anniversary one year we rented the Bayview Grange Hall. This is where we had met at a dance. I wore the same dress and pink sweater that I had worn to that dance when Dan first saw me. We had the whole ballroom to ourselves, and we danced and danced.
We danced at the celebration for Ian after our grandson became a Bar Mitzvah.
There are so many places we danced together while we were on a one of our many trips with our beautiful music amplified from our slide-in camper that sits on the bed of our pickup---the Everglades in Florida, Death Valley National Park, the Mojave National Preserve, several dance halls in Mesa, Montana de Oro in California, Bears Ears National Monument and Valley of the Gods in Utah, Granite Mountain Desert Training Center, Wikieup Arizona, Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, Fort Collins Colorado at Dan's 50th High School reunion, 29 Palms RV Resort near Joshua Tree National Park and in the Sheephole Mountains.
We have danced in the large ballrooms in our community and at Leisure World dances. We danced every Tuesday morning this last fall and winter at the Leisure World Big Band practice sessions (one of our favorite bands).
When we bought our Mesa home, Nuestra Armorosa Casa, we immediately decided that the room off the kitchen would be our “activity room." So we had the rug removed and had a dance floor installed and left this room empty of furniture. This is where our ping pong table lives. We play ping pong there, and we repair our bicycles and use our activity room as a staging area for our beloved desert camping and hiking trips.
And we dance in this special activity room that has no furniture except the Hoosier cabinet that Dan restored many many years ago (one of our heirlooms that we treasure). Every Sunday this summer Dan has put together a beautiful, moving playlist of our music, I put on a pretty flowing skirt, we put on our dance shoes, and we dance!
It is beautiful. We forget that we are over 70 years old and I float in Dan’s arms and we feel young. Maybe it’s not really surprising, but we actually move and dance like we are in our 20’s again. We are dancers and we feel beautiful and young.
Dancing is part of our life and we intend to take each other in our arms and dance all our life together.
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