Better Than the Ballroom

There were fireflies and one lone sprinkler fanning droplets onto grass before reaching just beyond a low retaining wall in a shower of water that danced at my feet. We passed by the walkway that led to my grandparents’ front door. I peeked inside where the other adults sat glued to the console television, watching Lawrence Welk. Inside, I’d been shushed one time too many, my grandmother glancing fiercely at my grandfather as I talked through the crooning and “a-one-and-a-two-ing” of the great conductor and his performers. So my grandfather had taken my hand, and we had escaped from the glow of the TV screen into the hum of the night. Looking back now, I think he must have been just as glad as I to slowly stroll up and down that one block of Meadow Street, letting time inch away without a second thought. I squeezed his hand and wondered if he noticed as I pressed the veins that rose through smooth brown skin. I didn’t know it then, but in that moment he stood between two battlefields, in the hush of quiet between two storms. One battle he had won, long ago leaving that enemy at the bottom of a bottle with the cork shoved in place for good. The other battle he would lose against lungs that turned to cement in the hollow of his chest, refusing to let the good air in, until one night there just wasn’t any space left. The other day I watched a man in the post office as his shoulders rose and dropped back hard into their sockets in the fight for just one breath of air. I watched him and remembered how—near the end—my grandfather had fought just like that for a taste of oxygen as he sat in our kitchen, working yeast into the dough while beans and neck bones simmered on the stove. I remembered how he’d cough out a chuckle and shake his head slow when my college-aged self would yammer on and on about the man who was slowly sweeping me off my feet. And later, he’d slip away in his mind when medicine and lack of air caused him to lose his grip. But that wasn’t this night. On this night he held on tight, and we left Lawrence Welk behind. Together we shared an outdoor ballroom where life danced across surface notes of traffic and sprinklers and whispers of light, and big man steps and little girl steps—parceled out in triple time to keep up—made their way down a concrete path. I squinted my eyes as the fireflies sparkled and knew Mr. Welk and his big band crew had nothing on me in this moment. Photo by LL Barkat. Used with permission. Post by Deidra Riggs.