Six months after a heart-crushing breakup, I took a ballroom dance class at a local community centre.
"You'll meet new men," my friends said.
They weren't kidding.
In the space of two hours, I must have quick-stepped, waltzed and fox-trotted with a dozen eager guys. The only problem? I was in my late 30s, and most of the men who showed up that day were senior citizens. They were kind, dapper gents - just not the dance partners I had in mind.
"I'm on the verge of extinction!" my first dance partner shrilled, pressing an icy palm into the small of my back. "Cold fingers," he said, rubbing his hands together.
"It's OK," I laughed, patting his arm. Something about him felt reassuring, familiar. With his tweed coat and easy smile, he reminded me of my adoring grandfathers, both long gone.
"Quick, quick, slow!" bellowed my next dance partner.
"Quick, quick ... sorry!" I yelped.
Despite his gruff manner, though, the guy had moves. Together, we were like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire - that is, if Ginger had towered over Fred and both had been directionally challenged. I grew a little worried; I didn't want to be responsible for any broken hips. Mercifully, he soon turned red so we both sat out the next song.
As I watched an elderly couple shuffling on the dance floor, my thoughts wandered to my ex-boyfriend, Dave.
We'd met the previous winter, when I was recovering from a bad bout of pneumonia. (I have cystic fibrosis, a lung disease that requires me to take steroids and frequent doses of antibiotics.) Just as I started to feel better, a mutual friend suggested Dave and I meet for coffee. Over the next few weeks, we danced a skittish two-step, slowly getting to know each other. We'd both had our hearts stomped on before.
"I feel at home in myself with you," he said one day, taking my hands in his. Two steps forward. Then I didn't hear from him for a week. Two steps back.
One night, he made a bold move.
"I haven't felt like this about anyone in years," he said. Instead of saying goodbye at the door to my apartment that evening, Dave came in and stayed till morning. Ten giant steps forward.
As I sat there on the community centre bench, six months after our disastrous breakup, it dawned on me: Some things in life don't add up. And sometimes, just when you think you've found your lifelong dance partner, the song ends and you spin apart.
"Say, did you come to dance or what?" the voice of a silver-haired man broke me out of my daydreaming.
I smiled and stood up.
In a roomful of men my own age, I wouldn't have noticed this man. But here, amidst the shuffling carousel of seniors, this handsome elder really stood out. Unlike everyone else in the room, he was taller than me. He also had style: black satin shirt and gold necklace style. He strode up to me and bowed.
"May I have this dance?" he asked.
I felt a surge of admiration for him - for his outfit, so carefully planned, for his slicked-back hair, his full-body tremors, and the peppermint pocketed in his cheek. But most of all, for the wicked gleam in his right eye, which said: I'm still a handsome devil, and you'd be lucky to dance with me.
"I'd love to," I said. And I meant it.
I took his hand and off we spun, dancing circles around everyone.
"You're very good!" I yelled into his good ear, the left one. "Where did you study?"
"Eighty-seven!" he sang out.
Feeling girlish and free, I threw back my head and laughed like I hadn't in months.
In that moment, none of it mattered: his age, my battered heart, our beaten-down bodies, or the sad songs that played inside us like broken records. (Surely at 87, he'd had his share of heartache.) What mattered was that we had, to paraphrase my late mother, picked ourselves up by the bootstraps and tried again.
That night, as I lay in bed, my thoughts turned to Dave.
One of the last times I saw him, we were dancing in my living room. We were bouncing around to Weezer, laughing and pretending to forget that I'd soon be moving across country and our time together would end. Then a slow song came on and he pulled me close for one last dance. Nothing fancy, no formal steps, just the two of us pressed together the way people do when they both know it's time to say goodbye.
Christine Schrum lives on Vancouver Island and has written for the Atlantic, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and the Globe and Mail.
