Never Sit If You Can Dance

by Jo Giese

Years later, I was living in Southern California. A horrific rainstorm that caused mudslides and traffic accidents had closed every road and canyon into and out of our beach community. Since we were stranded, I sloshed over to a neighbor’s house—there was no power, no phone service—and invited them to gather around our fire. We’d ride out the storm together.

  “It’ll be more fun,” I said. Things had gotten so bad, it put me in a good mood. Since we were all marooned, the only thing to do was to gather together.

  Diane and Fred kept eyeing the door that led from their kitchen to the garage. The bath towels they’d rolled up at the threshold were already sopping wet. My neighbors were too nervous about the heavy rains flooding their house to leave. So I splashed back home, sopping wet, and came back with a platter of sandwiches, which we shared sitting at their dining room table. It wasn’t the once-in-a-lifetime community camaraderie of Waiting for Carla—the gathering together of a tribe in a crisis—but it was something.

  For Babe, Sharing Fun also meant Celebrate Everything, including May Day. When I was about five, in preparation for the first day of May, I wove little baskets out of strips of paper. Babe and I gathered flowers, rhododendron blooms in shades of pink from our backyard hedge, and stuffed them into the baskets. Then five-year-old me scampered from door to door in the neighborhood, ringing the doorbell, quickly dropping a basket, and running away fast (and probably giggling like crazy), before anyone could spot who had left the anonymous Happy May Day gift. As I grew older, I experienced a letdown when it was May 1 and no one was rushing around with May baskets. Once, in my building in New York City, I dropped off small May baskets for the neighbors on our elevator line. For the most part, the gesture was misunderstood. “Isn’t May Day International Workers’ Day or something like that?” asked a neighbor. Yes, it is that, but it is also a celebration of spring, especially if you’re Babe’s daughter.

  Decades later, Eileen, our next-door neighbor from the Hurricane Carla days, was widowed. She remarried, but since she and her new husband had gotten such a late start, they celebrated their wedding anniversary weekly. Why wait a year when you have fifty-two opportunities? Since Ed and I met later in life—we were in our sixties—and, remembering Eileen’s weekly ritual, I made it ours. Because we met on a Friday and had our first date on a Friday, we celebrate our good fortune every Friday. As I’m writing, we’ve celebrated 525 Fabulous Fridays, and counting.

  By the time Babe was in her mid-nineties, “sharing fun is the whole thing,” and “celebrate everything” became “never miss happy hour.” At her senior residence, as happy hour approached, she’d often say, “Oh, I’ve got to get some pep. I don’t know if I’ll go tonight.” But she always managed to get on the elevator and go downstairs to the pub for the camaraderie, for her two scotch and sodas, and for gathering around the campfire of community.

  LESSON 7:

  THE HAPPINESS OF GIVING AND RECEIVING FLOWERS

  It was always easy to spot Dad in a crowd because he was the one who had a spring in his step. When he walked, he bounced! off the balls of his feet, and this was without the aid of springy, cushy-soled sport shoes—and never more so than when he was bounding into the house with flowers for his sweetheart. They were usually gladiolas. Since Gladys was Babe’s given name, sometime early in their courtship the two of them must have adopted that long, spiky, colorful bloom as “their” flower. There were usually glads in the house, their romantic currency.

  “So, Dad brought you gladiolas?” I said to Babe.

  “He knew I liked them. It was as simple as that,” she said. “And he brought them just anytime.”

  We’d been discussing her grandson Tony and the frustrating discussion we’d had on his recent visit to Southern California about his unwillingness to bring flowers to the woman who was the love of his life, the woman he was living with.

  “Of course, it depends on the money,” said Babe. “Tony isn’t rich, but I feel the way Jade does.”

  The Jade Babe was identifying with had hair dyed pitch black, facial piercings, and, on her chest, a tattoo of an eagle whose wingtips extended up past her collarbone. But when it came to how this early-thirties, punk-looking woman, who’d been raised mostly in foster care, wanted to be treated by the special man in her life, tough-looking Jade was as much of a softie as Babe.

  I explained to Mom how the four of us—Ed and I, Tony and Jade—had been hanging around the kitchen, making dinner, when the subject of a man bringing a woman flowers had come up. Tony had protested. “They’re expensive,” he said. “A hundred and twenty dollars a bouquet.”

  “On my way home from work, I get flowers at Trader Joe’s,” said Jade.

  “Look at that bouquet there,” said Tony, pointing to a slender vase of gorgeous white lilies on the kitchen counter.

  “They were ten dollars at the farmers’ market,” I said. “Ten dollars. Total.”

  “What’s the quid pro quo if I bring her flowers?” said Tony. “What do I get if I give her flowers?”

  Ed and I exchanged a look of disbelief. Quid pro quo for ftowers?

  “Not every gesture has an equal market exchange,” said Ed.

  “You get the Tony dance,” said Jade, who demonstrated a butt-wiggling, hip-gyrating, happy-you’re-home jig.

  I told Tony that in the beginning of our relationship Ed was tentative when he brought me flowers.

  “Ed, timid?” said Tony, who was clearly unfamiliar with the shy side of his hotshot lawyer uncle.

  I explained that Ed would come into the house, cradling one of those cellophane-wrapped, multicolored bouquets, the prearranged kind you can pick up at any grocery store, and he’d be nervous that it wouldn’t please me, that I’d be critical. Instead of handing it to me directly, he’d keep the flowers close to his chest, an uncertain look on his face. Meanwhile, I was flattered that even at the grocery store that he’d dashed into to pick up some quick sushi for lunch, this man I loved had been thinking of me. Jade was nodding her head in agreement.

  The three of us gave Tony a look that implied, Buddy, it’s so simple. Why don’t you get it?

  Tony nodded. Maybe our message was hitting home after all.

  By the way, I always wondered why Ed, of all people, such a self-confident individual, would be shy about bringing flowers home. It didn’t compute until a daughter-in-law told me about Ed’s late wife: how he’d brought her a bouquet and she’d complained because it contained carnations. Carnations. I told my daughter-in-law I’d be happy with whatever flowers my lover brought me.

  Babe’s lesson about the wisdom and romance of giving and receiving flowers has pretty much permeated the entire family, including Tony’s father, my brother. The first time I visited his new home, front and center, presiding boldly on the glass table behind the couch, was a tall bouquet he’d just given his bride—orange gladiolas, exactly what Dad would have brought Mom.

  LESSON 8:

  THE GOOD GOODBYE

  When my parents entertained, they would walk their guests out to their cars, tuck them in, and then, standing with their arms around each other, wave until the guests were well on their way, sending them off with a benediction, a good goodbye.

  Described simply like this—arms around each other, happily waving—it doesn’t seem to be all that much for anyone to emulate, to hold up as a behavioral yardstick, a lesson for a lifetime. And yet.

  When Ed and I moved into the home where we’re living now, it could have been tempting and it would have felt natural to begin and end the leave-taking with our guests at the front door. But remembering the warmth of my parents’ goodbyes—how they softened the blow of the departure—we walk our guests down the front steps (there are only three) and watch and wave.

  Standing out on the sidewalk, Ed has said, “Let’s go back inside,” and he’s given me a kiss. Meanwhile, our guests are buckling themselves in, turning on the ignition. “I don’t want to stay out here for no reason,” he’s said.

  “No, we hav
e to wait,” I’ve explained.

  The driver usually rolls down his or her window and waves back at us. Often I throw kisses, and sometimes our friends toot their horn. Our reward—or my reward, because by this point Ed’s usually gone back inside—in the to and fro of this goodbye dance is that sometimes the guests also yell out another final “Love you!”

  “It’s necessary to keep waving?” asked my friend Linda, when we were discussing what I’ve come to think of as the “departing gesture.”

  I nodded. Although I’d never said it in so many words, yes, in my family it was necessary to keep waving.

  I’d never thought about the “departing gesture” until I started noticing how other people give it such short shrift. Some hosts, even a particularly favorite one, remain seated in their living room, which prompts the departing guest (me) to mumble, “Oh, don’t bother getting up. I’ll see myself out.” Even if it’s dark out there and you end up stumbling around to find your car.

  “The parting gesture expresses the sorrow that someone is leaving,” said Linda. “It demonstrates, Let’s hang on to this experience; it was great.” She paused. “Now you’ve made me think. With my son going off to college, we arranged a car for him, but did I walk him down and out to the car? Did he experience loneliness because I didn’t do that?”

  “That’s different,” I said. “That was New York City.”

  I was giving Linda a pass because she’s a good friend and I love her, and it was New York City, and there can be so much rigmarole getting out of your apartment, down the elevator, and out to the street. But at the same time I was also struggling to understand this family ritual that I took for granted and I was still dragging around. Was it all that important, or could I drop it?

  Parting and separating, leave-taking, isn’t easy for me. Ed will come into my office and say goodbye, and kiss me while I’m at my desk. Yet when I hear the garage door open as he’s about to leave, I’ll always race downstairs and kiss him again. “I thought we already did that,” he’s been known to say.

  Later in life, after Babe moved into a senior apartment, her friend Helene would stop in to play gin rummy and have lunch. The first time Helene departed, Amanda, Babe’s caregiver, saw her to the door and assumed that was that.

  “It’s not nice to shut the door on people,” said Babe. “They’ll think we think, Thank God they’re leaving.” Babe could no longer run after Helene, but she asked Amanda to open the door, see Helene down the hall, and wait with her at the elevator.

  “Your Dad and I weren’t perfect, but. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  As with many new immigrants, caregiving was Amanda’s first job in America. (In Nicaragua, she’d received a degree in industrial design, and her husband reminded us that her diploma was handy in case any of us wanted to see it again.) Although Amanda was plenty smart, she was pretty slow picking up on Babe’s art of the good goodbye.

  Once, when I was leaving Houston after a visit, Babe offered to drive me to the airport. This meant that Amanda would drive me in Babe’s car because Babe had stopped driving. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon when we set off for George Bush Intercontinental Airport, freeway traffic was especially light, and, although driving someone to the airport isn’t my idea of fun, in the front seats, Amanda and her copilot were as cheerful as little kids on a special outing.

  “Snicklefritz really knows how to use that contraption,” said Babe, pointing to the portable Garmin GPS Amanda had suctioned to the dash. (An aside: it was not lost on me how freely Babe gave compliments to Amanda, someone outside the family. See Lesson 11: Never Leave a Compliment Unsaid.)

  When we arrived at the departure terminal, Amanda braked at the curb and popped open the trunk, all while she remained firmly buckled in the driver’s seat. I got my bag out, but before Amanda could speed off, Mom insisted, “I have to say goodbye.”

  Although we’d already said goodbye, Amanda’s businesslike send-off was too hasty for Babe. Her efficiency lacked a certain gracefulness and charm. And, for a change, this wasn’t one of those crazy, jammed-up airport-traffic days, so there was no urgency for me to jump out fast and grab my roller bag before the airport police gave Amanda a talking-to.

  Mom rolled down her window, and I opened her car door for another final kiss, a pat, and a wave. This extra petting, hand holding, and lingering signaled, I’m sorry you’re leaving. I’ll miss you.

  “Come back anytime,” she said. “I never tire of you.” And then the final, motherly parting: “Behave yourself.”

  In 2013, Ed and I visited his son and his family in Connecticut, and we had what we thought was one of our best visits. When the taxi arrived, all seven of us—including three grandchildren—had congregated in the front hallway, spilling out onto the porch. We’d hugged and kissed and fussed and re-hugged and promised we’d get together again soon. Then Ed and I proceeded down the brick walkway to the car. Before I got in, I glanced back toward the house. The front door was shut tight. Not one person was still throwing us a final goodbye kiss, a wave. It felt so lonely. In that stark, empty moment, I missed my parents more than I had almost anytime since I’d been an adult.

  Although our eleven-year-old grandson had even declined a sleepover so he could be around to say goodbye to us in the morning, something was not right, and I felt it. I tried letting it drop, cutting them some slack, chalking it up to “different families do things differently.” But I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that cold farewell transmitted.

  That evening it still stung, and I was caught by surprise when the feeling spread to Ed: Your family doesn’t know how to say goodbye, so I’m not making love with you. Poor Ed.

  Was it boorish of me to interpret that goodbye so negatively? Maybe we Gieses cleave and cling too long? It turned out I’d caught the vibe correctly. Slowly, it dribbled out that Ed’s son and his wife were disappointed with us; they felt we hadn’t paid enough attention to their eldest child. We’d started taking the six grandchildren on individual adventures—whale watching in Baja, hiking in Big Sur—and hadn’t yet stepped up to invite their eldest son, who was twelve and autistic. Quickly, we made amends and asked James, who had never traveled away from his parents, to choose a city. He picked Washington, DC, because Ed had lived there, and he elected to travel by train. Because James had a fascination with the presidents (he’d already memorized all their birth dates), for three days we toured presidential monuments, ate french fries at lunch and dinner, visited Ed’s old house in Bethesda, and somehow, even in Washington, DC, managed to avoid the triggers his parents had warned us set him off: crowds, lines, and traffic.

  After we returned James safely home, their goodbye was fabulously warm. The entire family stayed out on the porch, lingering and waving—pretty much exactly the way my family would have done it.

  LESSON 9:

  PEOPLE DON’T LIKE TO BE AROUND DEPRESSED PEOPLE

  In my parents’ bedroom, there was a large, framed poster of a boy and a girl holding hands, with the caption “I can’t make it alone.” This was at a time when dependency had gone out of style, and, as someone who viewed herself as an independent feminist, I found that poster offensive. What do you mean, Babe? Of course you can make it alone! (Probably that poster rattled me so much because it touched a personal nerve. I was still in denial that if something happened in my marriage, I wouldn’t want to make it alone.)

  My parents had been married almost fifty-four years when my father died. I had reason to worry that Babe, eighty-one and alone for the first time in her adult life, would be lost, adrift, depressed. I can’t make it alone. Haven’t we all heard about “broken-heart syndrome,” when a long-married spouse dies and the surviving spouse follows soon afterward?

  Instead, while my father’s ashes were still warm, Babe renewed her passport. From the crematorium, where we chose a plain cardboard cylinder (because Babe knew Dad wouldn’t want her wasting good money on anything fancy), my sister and I took Babe directly to the passport offic
e in downtown Seattle.

  In keeping with Dad’s spirit, instead of a funeral or a memorial, we hosted a party in their condo. By the front door, we stacked up dozens of his jumpsuits, and, wearing a baby-blue one, I handed them out as party favors when friends departed. Then Babe left the country with my sister and her husband and a dozen of their friends on a trip to France that had been planned beforehand; at the last minute, my sister had insisted on adding Babe. I worried that it was too soon, that she’d be crying all the way from Paris to Strasbourg. Instead, it was just right.

  “Life is for the living!” Babe said, as I helped her pack her sturdy blue Samsonite luggage.

  She probably wasn’t familiar with the term carpe diem, but at critical times during tragic transitions—when her mother died, when her husband died—she embodied it in bold, blazing colors. Life is for the living.

  When times got even tougher, when Babe had outlived not only Dad but all their friends, and even when her only remaining sister, Aunt Dell, died, Babe’s behavior, which I’d describe as almost upbeat, puzzled me.

  “Why aren’t you depressed?” I asked her.

  “People don’t like to be around depressed people,” she said.

  Oh.

  For Babe, who was sociable, it was that simple. Dealing with loss required an attitude adjustment. She chose not to sink into despair because she didn’t want to be a social outcast.

  I mistrusted that it could be so easy. All those years and years I’d spent in therapy, could I have done it Babe’s way? No way. Not yet. Back then, I was still too confused, too young, too immature.

  It wasn’t always that easy for Babe, either. She’d had to grow into this maturity. Way back when she was a young mother of two, when her mother came to live with us, when her dashing husband was away on business too often, in eight years she suffered five heartbreaking miscarriages. Coming from a family of four sisters, she’d desperately wanted more children, five children, which had made me think, What’s wrong with who’s already here? Aren’t my brother and me enough? To say she sunk into a valley of depression is an understatement.