“So! Is this your lady friend?” one of the septuagenarians at our table asks Boyfriend, her voice prim but friendly. Her husband shoots me a wink and I smile back, fixing my gaze on the lapels of his powder blue suit to avoid staring at his rheumy eyes.
Leaning back in our fold-out chairs, we gaze around the whitewashed basement of the Peekskill Masonic Lodge, its fluorescent lights illuminating eighty or so people gathered for the occasion. It’s the 50th wedding anniversary of Boyfriend’s aunt, a small woman with bird-like eyes and a perfect smile, and we’re here to eat pot roast, slide across the vinyl dance floor to a DJ’s best selection of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, and toast the happy couple with water glasses filled with sparkling cider.
“So you two live in New York City?” asks the woman next to me. She’s young for this crowd, in her fifties, her curly brown hair pulled into a low ponytail held with a wide ribbon. Her makeup-free eyes are large and liquid, her dress shapeless with a large floral print. “I went down there once, a few years ago,” she continues in a friendly tone. “Such a crazy place! I was trying to get to Times Square and I got in this taxi cab and it didn’t move for twenty minutes! I asked the driver what was happening and he said it was just traffic, that I should take the subway if I was in a hurry. I said uh-uh, no way sir! I’m a country girl, I’m not getting on any New York subway.”
Unsure how to respond, I laugh and remark how perfectly cooked the roast is. The table nods approvingly; I’ve aligned myself with food, showed some knowledge of cooking - despite my city-girl appearance, I’ve steered myself away from those nutty new age females who wear men’s suits and refuse to set foot in a kitchen.
“Ralph, don’t forget your pills.” The first septuagenarian picks up her bag, a mass of purple and turquoise fabric held with a drawstring, and pulls out a small plastic bottle, placing it on the table in front of her husband. “Are you two going to dance?” she turns back to me. “You’re both young, you should dance.”
Boyfriend glances at the crowds twisting and sliding to the Pennsylvania Polka and Boot Scoot Boogie. “Not sure I know how to do any of these dances, I’m afraid,” he says pleasantly.
“Arthur Murray is what you need!” the sweet but slightly licentious husband pipes in, swallowing two green pills shaped like flat jelly beans and washing them down with a gulp of cider. “That’s where we learned, me and Sylvia. Arthur Murray Dance School. That’s where you went in our day, everyone went there. Back when you could drive ‘cross town to dance class on a tank of gas that cost a quarter!”
“Really?” I ask, bemused by the older generation’s surefire insistence on marveling at inflation. “So you went to dancing school?”
“Sure! When you were courting your wife, that’s what you did in those days. And proms and stock car races, anything where you could try to sneak away from the chaperone.” Here comes another wink, this time accompanied by a jaunty head tilt. I can’t help grinning at his shamelessness.
Nibbling our mashed potatoes and peas, watching ten or so couples sway to “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Boyfriend and I exchange a long look. Our thoughts are identical: this place, with its Oldsmobiles parked behind massive oak trees and cross-stitched psalms decorating the walls may as well be a parallel universe, an alternate reality juxtaposed with our cramped Manhattan apartment, fridge filled with takeout Ethiopian leftovers and bed covered with laptops, Blackberries and stray cables. We’re stricken with the condescension of the young, that sense of inheriting the world and scorning those who no longer keep up, but we have enough ingrained humility to feel ashamed of our patronizing attitude. I look down - he’s tapping his foot now, glancing around quickly, his signals for cabin fever. They’re contagious, and soon my eyes are darting, plotting an escape route from this museum of antiquated ideals.
“How are you doing? Getting by over there?” Boyfriend’s mom, knowing his signs as well as I do, calls to us, pulling his attention away from the door. “Don’t go anywhere; they’re gonna make their speech in a minute.”
Just as she finishes the sentence, the music stops, and the couple of the hour steps to the microphone. The groom stands a foot taller than his wife, his shoulders, sloped from age, still clearing the top of her head. After a brief round of “Thank you all for being here”s, they step on to the dance floor.
“He hates to dance,” Boyfriend’s mom whispers, pointing at the awkwardly-bobbing groom. “I’d say the last time she got him to dance in front of a crowd like this was their wedding, in ‘56.” I start to laugh but shut my mouth, shocked to see tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe it’s been so long, I just can’t believe it. Where did it all go?”
I’m instantly humbled; entire lives, a half-century of marriages, families, deaths, the span of human experiences, are being celebrated in this place, and all we can think about is escape, fleeing back to our overstimulated, underappreciated urban existence. I grab Boyfriend’s hand, gesture towards his mother’s face, and his feet freeze. He squeezes my palm and I inch my chair closer to his as the realization hits: we’re the only ones in the room with most of our future still ahead of us. Fifty years from now, we should only be so lucky as the white-haired duo plodding across the dance floor. The least we can do is listen, appreciate, enjoy their moment, and not plot our getaway.