Marriage and the art of dance

I was shocked when Rob told me to call the telemarketer back.

I always thought he didn't like dancing, so when I got the call from a local ballroom dance studio offering a free trial lesson I just chuckled wistfully and hung up.

Turns out it's not that Rob doesn't like dancing, it's that he doesn't like not dancing well. He spent a good part of his early adulthood working throughout the Caribbean where dancing is an art form and people seem born with a beautiful sense of rhythm. His travels left him a little ashamed of his typically, rhythmically-challenged, white, northern-European background and loathe to take to the dance floor.

But lucky for both of us he was ready to learn.

I was five months pregnant when we showed up for our first lesson. We bickered bitterly over his imperative to lead and my apparent inability to let him, but were nonetheless hooked. Before we left we signed up for several more classes.

Dance class became our date night and all that summer and fall my stomach grew as did our competence at the Foxtrot, the Cha-Cha and the Waltz.

We deliberately chose to learn older dances - those choreographed odes to compromise and propriety - because we discovered that we both felt they were classic, old-fashioned arts in danger of being forgotten or passed over for the sweaty, sexy gyrating that dominates dance floors today.

One of my earliest and happiest memories involves dancing with my father. I was about six years old and wearing black, patent-leather shoes which caused me to slip and slide most ungracefully as he expertly lead me through the Jitter-Bug, the Cha-Cha and the Waltz.

I remember feeling simultaneously like a glamorous grown-up and an incompetent little girl as he twirled me about and I tried, and mostly failed, to keep pace. I remember feeling exhilarated and happy and proud, aware that people were watching and smiling at the spectacle.

And then I remember retiring to my seat and watching my dad take my mother's hand and lead her through the same steps. It was as if they had been dancing together forever. One day, I thought, I want to dance with somebody like that.

Rob and I have learned that dancing, real dancing, is about so much more than moving to the music.

Before you learn to dance you must learn to respect your partner's space. For women, that means you have to relax and to trust, to be open enough to accept just slightest movement from your partner as your cue to follow them wherever they may lead.

Real dancing is about compromise, about anticipating your partner's needs and intentions. It demands the ability to work together for mutual ease and enjoyment: I can't think of a better time for a couple to learn these skills than as they await the birth of their first baby.

We continued our weekly dance lessons right up until six days before Graham's birth and were back at the studio just three weeks later. Graham slept peacefully in his carrier as we polished a Foxtrot routine to Roger Miller's King of the Road.

Rob and I haven't been back the dance studio for about two years now, thanks to a lack of money and time, those two age-old buzz-killers. We talk all the time about starting lessons again, about adding Swing and the Rumba to our repertoire, but luckily we have already picked up enough steps to be mildly impressive on the dance floor at bars and parties.

And that makes me proud.

Because one day I hope my children, or perhaps my grandchildren, will watch us dance with the same wide-eyed wonder with which I watched my parents.

Look at Mom and Dad, they will say, it's as if they've been dancing together forever.