Only fools rush in

Life is all about new experiences, isn't it?

Last night it was line dancing. And then, this morning, the phone rang at 9:00 and it was my dad, which may sound unremarkable to you, Gentle Reader, but it is quite remarkable to me. See, my dad almost never calls me. Like me, he doesn't do good phone. Must be where I get it from.

He was calling to ask me about California.

"We didn't get much of a chance to talk last night," he began, "And Frances is wondering whether you are going to move to California."

Frances is The Wife. She's had me married and moving to California since I first told her about Jack a few weeks ago, and how he would be coming here on my birthday to take me dancing — with them. But now she's confused about California, the poor thing —

Can you feel the sarcasm dripping off the end of that sentence?

— because I had mentioned to my dad on the phone on Sunday afternoon how I had been in L.A. for two days last week, and how I thought he'd like the dress he bought me in Santa Monica, and that I'd be seeing him in a few hours and I'd tell him all about it then.

But then we went dancing, the four of us, at the German club in Niagara Falls, and when you're dancing there isn't that much time to talk.

It's kinda why I planned it that way. See, I wanted Jack to meet my father, and I wanted my father to meet Jack, but sitting in The Wife's living room staring across the coffee table at one another was not going to be the best way to do it. One needs a more conducive setting for these types of meetings. You know the type I mean. Ideally, the rules of engagement must allow for distraction, movement, even escape, if necessary.

It turns out there wasn't even the briefest of coffee table summits. As we pulled into my dad's driveway, his car door opened and he stepped out. Frances stayed put in the passenger seat. I couldn't tell if he had just been coming or going, or what.

"How long have you been sitting there waiting for us?" I asked.

"Vell, I thought we'd drive to the corner and wait there for you, so we could get going right away when you got here," he replied, and then he shook Jack's hand.

"Let's go, it starts at 7:00. It's just down Highway 20 into Niagara Falls. Follow me."

Enough formalities, for now.

In my car, Jack said to me, "You have his eyes," and then he chuckled, and added, "I like your dad's sense of humour."

They'd only shaken hands and said hello. What sense of humour?

"What he said about waiting for you at the corner."

"Um, Jack, he wasn't kidding about that."

My dad likes to be on time when he goes dancing.

Half an hour later we were sitting at a floorside table at German Village. It was early; the dance had just started, and there were only three couples on the floor. We got a drink and watched them for a couple of numbers.

Jack had a look on his face. A look that was hard to decipher, even for me, and I'm pretty darned good at it.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is this not what you were expecting?"

I work very hard to set Jack's expectations appropriately, especially for this weekend. I work even harder at setting my own. Because, see, so long as your expectations are set at the right level, you can never be disappointed.

"You know how you think you know stuff?" he said, "How you know what you're good at and you're good at what you know, and you think that's just great and just fine and is always going to work?"

"OK..." I said.

"And then you walk into a room of septagenarians who, without even being aware that they are doing it, put you soundly into your place."

Jack is a competent dancer, and had, I thought, nothing to worry about in this arena, but it's true that the couples, all of whom were of my dad's generation, were excellent dancers. Still, Jack isn't presented with many opportunities to be humble, nor I with opportunities to be better than him at something, so I was going to enjoy this.

My dad is an excellent dancer. So is Frances, but she's pretty old — meow, I know, but she is ten years older than my dad — and I know my dad loves it when I'm around on the dance floor, because he can push and spin me around with a little more force.

He gave Jack some waltz pointers: "You should take smaller steps, like this," he said, getting up from the table to demonstrate. "That way you can turn faster. You go one-to-three right, one-two-three left, then again, straight backwards, then you turn and you spin her around like this," he said, gesturing with an invisible me.

The evening was half over. The band was on a break, recorded music was playing, and it was time for line dancing. I'd always been under the impression that line dancing was done wearing cowboy boots, and so I'd left mine at home on purpose. Turns out I was wrong about that.

People always tell me I'm a good dancer, and I always respond that all I do is follow. Without a good man to lead me, I'm nothing. But in line dancing you're on your own.

I watched the dance leader, a man of about sixty wearing black suspenders, lead a group of twenty or so people through a sixteen bar sequence of steps. Left, right, spin left, spin right, then four steps forward, turn, walk back, walk front, shuffle in a circle, then repeat.

I can do that, I thought. I take tap dancing; I catch on to combinations quickly.

So I did. And it was a hoot, if you'll pardon the country bumpkinism. I guess I didn't grow up in Beamsville for nothing.

Later that night, Jack would tell me what my father had said to him while they sat at the table watching me: "Look at my little girl. She's not too bad, is she?" From my father, for whom delivering a straightforward compliment would likely draw the wrath of a malevolent lightning bolt, that is high praise indeed.

It was nearly pumpkin time. Jack and I would have to drive back to Toronto that night, and it had been a long day, especially for him. He'd had the nickel tour of my homeland, one of those trips down nostalgia lane. We'd been stuck in traffic on the QEW, in my black on black car with no air conditioning. We'd spent the afternoon at my aunt and uncle's house with my cousins, the scrutineers. And now he was writing the D-SAT. The Dad aptitude test.

It's really me that was being tested. This was me in the place I came from, with the people I've known my whole life. Jack's never known this me before, and I wasn't sure how he'd like her. What might change, and whether that would be for the better or for the worse. My family... well I love them dearly, I really do, but being with a gaggle of them is like being with me to the power of four. They're a lot to handle for any guy.

Before we left the German club Jack and I danced to "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You." Nice and slow. When the song was over Jack spun me around once, then pulled me backwards into his arm and kissed the back of my neck, and it had never felt more like he meant it than it did right then. It was one of those moments, you know, when you just know.

Much later, on the patio at the Rivoli, Jack and I ended the evening with a quiet beer and a recap of the day's events. For any man, this would have been a long, hard day. For Jack, it was monumental.

"So, how many times were there today when you had to fight back the urge to flee to California?" I asked.

Though I said it in jest I wasn't joking. All that mattered, though, was that he had fought it back. He was still here.

"Quite a few," he replied. "But there were also moments when...everything was just perfect. I have so few of those moments, and when they're gone, they're gone, and I don't know how to get them back."

"Moments like what?"

"Like that day in the diner, before Sara's wedding. Remember, when I told you the story about the guy who asked for sauce at a Texas BBQ?"

I would tell you the story, Gentle Reader, but the humour lies in the way Jack imitates the Texans as he tells it, and the particular sound effects with which he embellishes it. You just had to be there.

Jack continued: "And you laughed. It was the way that you laughed that..." He paused. "I don't know how to describe it."

I smiled at Jack over my beer. Really, I was restraining myself from bursting out laughing. He's the smartest man I know, but there are times when the simplest of things elude him.

He saw that I was laughing at him. "What? What is it?" he demanded. He was truly puzzled, which only made me laugh all the more.

"I do," I said. "There's a word that describes exactly that. A very simple word."

* * *
Tomorrow it's Jack's last night in town, and Sass decides to leave him alone. Little does the Wife know — little does anyone know — that a year from now, Postmodern Sass will, indeed, be moving to California.