I've made a conscious effort in the past few months to avoid posting old columns on this blog. Part of this has to do with a desire to keep thinking and writing, and part of it is due to the impending Mystery Book Publishing Venture this spring. I'm hoping this spring, anyway.
In fact, I'm hoping my book coincides with the publishing of RealLivePreacher.com, so Oprah can have a "Salon Blogger Books" show and we can all hang out in Chicago. RLP can tell about George, Rayne will stump for Dean, Christopher Key will recite some wicked poetry, Dave Pollard will show Americans how to save the world, and I will read one of my 317 essays about my daughter going away to college. Oprah will give us all makeovers and plasma TVs. I have it all planned out.
But today is January 16. The start of a new pay period for many. The end of the New Year's diet for many more. The sixty-second anniversary of the death of Carole Lombard, whose plane crashed into a mountain in Nevada as she was heading home from a wildly successful war bond tour to the waiting arms of Clark Gable.
And it's my mother's birthday, her first since my dad passed away last month. If I were a better son, I'd be there with her; my sister and her family are covering for me, though, as always.
I wrote a version of this years ago, before I had a newspaper column, and then last year I published it around Mother's Day. It'll also be in the book. Mom will probably be sick of it by then.
But I'm putting it here, my way of saying Happy Birthday and also suggesting to the rest of you that there are moments. Sometimes they're enhanced, exaggerated by time or the situation, and other times they stand, simply, to remind us that we didn't do it alone. I've got lots of these stories. This one is about
The Dance Lesson
The school year will be over in a few weeks, so soon it'll be yearbook time.
Let me tell you about yearbooks, you who don't know, who never cared or else are still too young to realize. Yearbooks are the most powerful force in the universe. Yearbooks resist laws of physics. They laugh at quaint ideas of time and space. Yearbooks take you back, and they take you fast. Open your yearbook with caution. Things are waiting for you there.
My high school senior yearbook is around here somewhere. I pretend to lose it sometimes, so I don't have to look at it and my kids can't find it and laugh at my hair. But it's here in my office, under stuff.
It isn't about pictures. We have pictures, baby photos and wedding albums. They can move us, but it's just reflected light captured on paper, flat and distant. Reminders. Yearbooks are alive, because people write in them. It's like opening a book to find a pressed flower or dried blood; there's DNA there, and it can shock us back in time.
We remember who wrote what, and remember exactly when. I look through my yearbook and read. Some people I still know. One I see a lot. One is dead. And so on.
And there, in a girlish script, in an ink that still seems sort of phosphorescent, Karen Parinello wrote me a note. I had a little crush on Karen, not much of anything, and we only dated once. But she had nice things to say, and then at the end of her message she reached out 27 years into the future to grab onto my soul and shake it.
"P.S.: Thank you for teaching me how to waltz."
It had been in the spring, a fundraiser for our marching band, who were going to Philadelphia that July to take place in the bicentennial celebration. They set up in the parking lot of a mall and played music for 24 hours, as I recall; maybe less, but it went on all night. They played a waltz, and people were dancing, so I asked Karen. She said she didn't know how. I said it was easy, I'd show her.
A few months earlier, I'd auditioned for a part in our school play. I thought I had a good chance, except for that dancing thing. As the saying goes, I had two left feet and the right one wasn't so hot, either. The choreographer tried to teach me a waltz, and I heard snickering in the wings.
I came home late that night to find my mother waiting up for me, as usual. I told her my frustrations, my inadequacy and my failure. I said I was going to give up.
She put down the book she'd been reading, and she told me things only a mother knows. She recited my entire history, problems I'd encountered and overcome, solutions I'd found, answers I'd discovered. She told me what I'd done and what I might possibly do, and then she went over to the stereo and put on music, and for 40 minutes or so my mother danced with me.
The yearbook is messing with my mind again. Suddenly I'm on the outside, looking in. I stand on the street and watch through the window as they dance around the living room. He is 17 and she is 39. She has work in the morning and he has life waiting for him, but for a while she teaches him how to waltz. ONE, two three, ONE, two, three.
I got the part, and if Mom took some credit for that she never said a word. ONE, two, three.
I've told her this all before, with some of the same words. She probably thinks I'm recycling my life for publication. I am, I am. ONE, two, three.
But I'm telling it to you now, because this Sunday is Mother's Day and it's not too late. I know, I know. It's a Hallmark Holiday, and reeks of legislated emotion and forced confessions. Of course I love my mother. Why should I have to tell her every May because you say I should?
Because I don't do it enough, is why. And I don't say thank you nearly enough, either.
So, thanks, Mom. Thanks for teaching me to tie my shoes. Thanks for making my lunches. Thanks for giving me your recipes. Thanks for teaching me to love music and theater.
Thanks for making me wash the dishes and clean my room. Thanks for loving my children. Thanks for sharing your memories. Thanks for teaching me how to make tacos.
Thanks for being cold and aloof to me when I was rude and thoughtless to you. Thanks for showing me that common courtesy starts with your family, or it never starts.
Thanks for showing me all the things I could do, if only I'd remember the things I've already done.
And P.S.: Thank you for teaching me how to waltz. It was just one of many moments, but some of those are still alive, like the writing in a yearbook. We are still dancing, I am still learning to believe, you are still teaching me, and looking back at my life I'm still convinced that has made all the difference.
8:33:36 AM 
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