Blog: tracker's place

A Memory

Friday
August 11, 2023
12:00 AM

DAY 2822 August 11, 2023 Blog City Prompt
Use these words in your entry today: reticent, preen, wiggle, jiggle, giggle and dance floor.

My late parents got married on this date in 1942. They were opposites, Dad outgoing and Mom the introvert, who fell in love during their senior high school year. My dad was the drum major of the marching band. He was living with his aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania. He had bright red, curly hair. He spent an hour preening in the morning to get the unruly hair to lay flat. My mom would demonstrate how she pictured him slicking gunk on it to make it stay flat and I would giggle at the image of that.

His parents sent him to Pennsylvania because he kept playing hooky from school in Brooklyn, New York City. Without reticence, he would go see a Big Band play. His favorite was the Benny Goodman Band. My Mom's favorite was the Glenn Miller Band. She told me the story about how he was shot down while flying somewhere over Europe during WWII. The two of them would play their favorite Big Band tunes turning our living room into a dance floor. They loved dancing cheek to cheek, but, after a slow dance the next snappy tune saw them wiggle and jiggle the jitterbug. When I was six, I remember thinking they were out of their loving minds, and I would giggle. That was one of my mother's favorite sayings. Her other favorite saying, usually directed at Dad, was you make me so mad; I could hit you over the head with a brick.

Dad was determined to listen to the music of his day in person. Our great-aunt and uncle did not allow him to work. He could not afford the price of tickets. He started to attend his self-compensated events when he went to a matinee performance by Artur Rubinstein at a large theatre, maybe Madison Square Garden. He sneaked in through the musicians' door, listened to the piano concert from the stage wing, and met the master as he left the stage to roaring applause. My Dad was not shy about talking to anyone. When he ended his career at Entertainment Tonight, he rubbed elbows with tons of celebrities. Sneaking into a Benny Goodman concert was the pinnacle of his illegal concert attendance.

We threw a huge fiftieth wedding anniversary party for them. By that time Dad was in a wheelchair due to emphysema. Mom had ovarian cancer when she passed away five years after he did. Sometimes, I think back to the day each died. I did not feel sad, but, felt glad. My parents were good parents and were in love to the end. Shhhh! Don’t tell my siblings, but each of our parents came to me on separate occasions to tell me I was their favorite child of the five of us. I felt it my entire life. What a joy to remember them in the living room dancing cheek to cheek.
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