Rita will turn 98 on the fourth of July. I only know this because of an apron.

It was her niece who bought it for her — this apron of mine. She had been a ballroom dancer with her husband. Still dancing in her nineties. And wasn’t that the whole point of what I wrote on that apron — “and then one day you realize, every floor is actually a dance floor…” Life is something! We are pushed and pulled, sometimes knocked over, knocked flat, by the pulsing beat..but the wisest, the strongest of us all, keep dancing.

It was my mother who taught me to dance in our kitchen. Nothing stopped her. In the green house on Van Dyke Road, in her lengthy arm exuberance, she knocked the light fixture from the ceiling. It fell like a disco ball, just missing both of our heads and crashed to the floor. A broom, a paper sack, and the record kept playing. When we moved to the brown house, she turned up the stereo in the dining room, and we danced within the frame of the orange countertops until we lost the house, and began apartmenting. Each floor became smaller, but never the dance. Still she pushed her hand into mine to signal the turn, and I would – sometimes spinning into stove, sink or fridge, but the dance continued.

So it seems no accident after all that I was invited into Rita’s kitchen. Aproned and joyful, she led me onto her dance floor. Watching the video she shared, I wanted to capture everything. I knew I would paint her. Every dish in the cupboard, plaque on the wall, it all felt so important. And it is!

I finished this painting yesterday in France. This image of her in California. Beginning from the lessons I had learned in Minnesota. We are all connected by this joyful beating of hearts. This music that never ends. This rocket’s red glare!

I often use the word “she.” Today I mean Rita. I mean my mother. Myself. (And hopefully you!) When I write the words, “…and so she would dance.”