I was in NYC for the last week for work, perusing textiles, making textiles, meeting and greeting folks from fancy stores, designing a showroom and getting my inspired on. I walked and walked and walked. So much so, that I have a nice little blister (I'll call her Melody) on my right heel. I saw some friendly mammals for dinnertime shenanigans and at the last day of the trip, paid a visit to grandma dot and grandpa ben. Grandma dot and I chatted about her travels to Spain and Sicily, Scotland and France. We talked about how she may have aged 20 years after my mother didn't come home during woodstock. We talked about food and that she should eat more vegetables and how she thinks I am a PAIN IN THE ASS and should MIND MY OWN DAMN BUSINESS for telling her what to eat. "I'm an old lady. 86 for God's sake. Leave me alone!" And so I changed the subject to something more palatable... dancing.
My grandparents met in the early forties at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC. My grandfather, a Sicilian immigrant living on Dean street in Brooklyn, wooed my Jersey grandmother by showing off his fancy moves - the lindy hop , which he claimed my grandmother couldn't grasp in the least bit due to her Jersey roots. (She preferred the jitterbug.)
Before my grandparents met, my grandfather and a few of his friends opened a dance joint in a broken down subway stop (Union and Smith) in Brooklyn. They called it the Victory Club. "All we did was dance. No beer, no grass. Just dancing."
My grandfather is frail and feeble at this point. He doesn't remember where I live and often asks me the same questions over and over again. He is at a loss as which day of the week it is, or whether or not he ate breakfast, but when it comes to Brooklyn and dancing, his memory comes into focus, his energy sparks and the stories begin to spill.
This is a picture I took while I was visiting the grandparents. My grandmother is holding a box of tissues, my grandfather is clutching a catheter bag (he just had minor surgery on his kidney). They are tough old birds. I love them dearly.