The Ranch Dance

My uncle’s ranch is in Mineral Wells, Texas – about an hour outside of Dallas. Every few years the family gathers there in the days following Christmas. It’s not a working ranch, with livestock or ranch hands. It’s just a beautiful lodge, a bunkhouse, and a dining hall perched on a bluff overlooking the River Brazos. There are hunting dogs in a kennel down the road, and a shooting range by the far gate. A hundred yards from the lodge sits an above-ground pool in the shape of the full moon that the boy cousins go skinny-dipping in. The rebel cousins congregate on the second story deck to take drags and exhale smoke into the Texas night. On the night before we leave, there is always a family dance. My uncle likes to play DJ, and the rest of us pretend to be excited about awkwardly two-stepping with family members we should never be made to dance with. The kids always start a limbo, and my favorite part of the weekend is watching Granddad feebly attempt the impossible with a chorus of “How low can you go?!” ringing through the house.

But the real highlight of the trip is watching Granddad and Mimi shuffle across the floor in the sweet and graceless way that couples in their seventies do. When that happens, the dance floor clears, and we all watch them with a sort of reverence. They deserve it, after all, because if it weren’t for them, none of us would be there at the ranch. No one would be skinny-dipping, or dancing awkwardly, or sneaking cigarettes on the deck. Uncle Dan wouldn’t be swearing at the fire pit because he can’t get the fire lit for the kids to make smores. Jason and his fiancée Katie wouldn’t be tangled in the loveseat in a dark corner of the great room. Aimee wouldn’t be pregnant with baby Nolan and Nikki wouldn’t be braiding little Bethany’s dirty blonde hair on the stoop. If it weren’t for Mimi and Granddad, for their life and their love, we wouldn’t speak with wistful tenderness about Tiffany, Donna, and Vicki – those of us who didn’t made it to the ranch this year because life doesn’t last forever.

But when life is over for Mimi and Granddad, it will carry on in us. We who spent the day traipsing through the woods clambering over rocks; we who held shooting contests at the range by the far gate; we who exist in the dim light of the fire on the back porch tonight, watching through the window into the lodge as Mimi and Granddad sway back and forth to the music that is no longer playing.