When our daughters left for college, my husband and I took up ballroom dancing. We signed up for lessons at a nearby studio and soon we were dancing four or five nights a week. Starting with the humble box step and the foxtrot, we progressed to fancier moves and the waltz, jitterbug, tango, quick-step, rumba, cha cha, mambo, samba, and bolero.
As a couple, we were well suited to ballroom dancing. Our respective natures, so different from each other, allowed us to fit neatly into the traditional dance roles which dictate that the man leads and the woman follows. After a day of dealing with abstruse higher education issues, I would drive to the studio, leave my feminist principles in the parking lot, step onto the dance floor and, playing my role with abandon, let the music and my partner dictate where and how I put my feet. For my husband, on the other hand, dancing presented a sort of three-dimensional puzzle which involved maneuvering us across the floor while keeping time with the music, remembering to lead the next step, and avoiding collisions with other couples. For some reason that I never understood, he enjoyed doing this.
In the course of our long marriage, our complementary talents served us well. Take the days leading up to our first baby’s first Christmas. Her gift was to be a large, stuffed Snoopy-like dog—home-made of course, those being graduate school years. I bought the pattern and the fuzzy fabric—white for the body and black for the ears and tail—and sewed the thing together. My husband’s job was to fill it with stuffing. Blessed with arm strength and a perfectionistic bent, he stuffed that dog so full of cotton that it was as solid as a rock, and lasted almost as long. As our daughters grew older, they continued to benefit from our diverse skills. He taught them how to ride a bike and, later, to parallel park (uphill, no less). I taught them to milk a goat. He supervised their math homework. I looked over their essays. And so on.
Now, however, after almost sixty years as a couple, life has been pared down to essentials, which is a blessing, but it hardly ever requires us to collaborate. But last week, in honor of the cat Telemann’s approaching ninth birthday, and feeling that his life as an indoor cat was in dire need of enrichment, I bought him a cat tree, one tall enough to reach the ceiling. It came in a big box from China, with no assembly instructions other than a diagram. As soon as it arrived, my spouse and I sprang into action, and the dance began.
He carried the box to the sun room and opened it with his trusty pocket knife. I removed the contents and spread them on the floor. (The cat rushed over to investigate and made a couple of experimental scratches on one of the platforms, which I found endearing). Together, we matched the parts to the diagram. He affixed the posts to the platforms while I held them steady. As the thing grew taller, I fetched the step stool for him to stand on. When all the pieces were in place, I moved the chair out of the way and he carried the tree to its designated spot. I pushed the base into position while he, again standing on the stool, adjusted the spring-loaded top against the ceiling.
And before we knew it there was Telemann’s tree, a thing of (relative) beauty (see below). We stood back and admired it, and I felt that once again we had done it, the father of my children and I. Using a minimum of words, each doing our instinctive best, we had assembled the tree as smoothly and precisely as we once tangoed across the dance floor.
