dancing – Sweat & Sparkle

Deb and Napoleon’s first dance, *Napoleon Dynamite*

My husband was flipping through TV channels last night and randomly landed on a music channel playing 80s videos. As soon as I heard the song, I melted. I told my husband, “Oh, this song was my first dance, back in middle school.”

He stood up immediately, which I wasn’t expecting. He smiled, reaching his arms out to me. We slow-danced in the middle of the living room, singing along, laughing as we remembered those awkward gym dances so long ago. I rested my head on his chest, and he kissed the top of my head.

I can’t remember the last name of the boy I danced with almost 40 years ago in that middle school gym. But I remember his face, his nervousness, the song, where we were in the gym, the excited butterflies I felt.

What a beautiful, nostalgic experience to slow dance to that same song, decades later, with my husband, in the living room of our home. Wherever that middle school boy is now, I hope he also found love, happiness, and his own lifelong dance partner.

When a weekend starts out with impromptu slow-dancing to “Stuck on You” in the bathroom while brushing my hair, well, you know it’s going to be a good one. My husband heard the song playing from my phone (it’s one of my favorite songs), took my hand, laughing, and pulled me close for a dance. When the song was over, he said, “I need to download this.” I can’t believe he didn’t already have it on his phone! Who doesn’t love Lionel Richie?

We spent most of Saturday on a mini road trip, so we were content to stay at home and just relax on Sunday. We’ve been doing a lot of work inside the house lately, and my husband was setting up new bookcases in one room, carefully displaying items that he collects on the shelves. He was lost in what he was doing. When I walked by the door, I had to pause. He had pushed his glasses up on top of his head, which roughed up his hair and made it stand up like bedhead. He was talking softly to himself, like he was narrating the action or directing a scene (“No, that should go up here…move that a little over here…then that should be over there…”).

The ones we love are at their most loveable when they are not even trying, when they are just doing what they do, being their own unique selves. I love watching my husband when he’s drawing, when he’s fixing something, when he’s completely focused on what he’s doing, when he’s not even aware I am looking at him, and all of him shines through. When the kids were younger, I liked slowing down in the hallway as I walked by their rooms so I could hear them with their toys, the hilarious things that kids say when they are entirely free and unaware of an audience, just letting their minds wander wherever they choose to go.

I didn’t interrupt my husband as he worked. Later, he called to me to come look at the room and the shelves, now that he was finished. He was smiling and looked so proud of himself. He said, “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

I like seeing him happy. I like seeing him smile, hearing him laugh. It’s little moments like that that stay in my heart and mean so much to me, because I know they are not little moments at all. It’s a moment I was invited into the most personal, special heartbeats of his mind, things that most others don’t ever see or feel, and I know how precious that is. So I hold onto that, treasure that, and don’t want to ever take it for granted.