When We're Alone, We Can Dance
 
            The cruise ship was crowded with people off for three
       days of pleasure. Ahead of me in the passageway walked a tiny
       woman in brown slacks, her shoulders hunched, her white hair
       cut in a bob.
            From the ship's intercom came a familiar tune - "Begin
       the Beguine." And suddenly a wonderful thing happened. The
       woman, unaware anyone was behind her, did a quick and graceful
       dance step - back, shuffle, slide.
            As she reached the door to the dining salon, she
       re-assembled her dignity and stepped soberly through.
            Younger people often think folks my age are beyond romance,
       dancing or dreams. They see us as age has shaped us; camouflaged
       by wrinkles, thick waists and gray hair.
            They don't see the people who live inside - we are the wise
       old codgers, the dignified matrons.
            No one would ever know that I am still the skinny girl who
       grew up in a leafy suburb of Boston. Inside, I still think of
       myself as the youngest child in a vivacious family headed by a
       mother of great beauty and a father of unfailing good cheer.
            And I am still the romantic teenager who longed for love,
       the young adult who aspired to social respectability - but whom
       shall I tell?
            We are all like the woman in the ship's passageway, in whom
       the music still echoes. We are the sum of all the lives we once
       lived. We show the grown-up part, but inside we are still the
       laughing children, the shy teens, the dream-filled youths. There
       still exists, most real, the matrix of all we were or ever
       yearned to be.
            In our hearts we still hear "Begin the Beguine" - and
       when we are alone, we dance.

 
                       By  Beth Ashley
                       from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul
                       Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor
                       Hansen & Patty Hansen