We get to see so many couples here, and families, and we may never get the story of their lives beyond what we see, but at the Big Band Dance last night..

..one beautiful mother was trying her best to allow her two little boys and her little girl dance with her. They all desperately wanted to please their mother with their steps and their twirls– and their dad, on the sideline, taking pictures agreed. “She’s a work of art,” he seemed to be saying.

Another couple kept gravitating to the dance floor whenever the tempo picked up. She was one of those stone cold beauties who appeared to soften, slightly, with the music. I can’t say much about this couple, but they were impossible NOT to watch.

Another woman had no partner, but she wanted to dance so desperately that she was willing to dance on her own — and it didn’t feel awkward at all. Her desire to celebrate rendered her gorgeous.

Yet another couple were in their nineties. They shifted onto the dance floor whenever the music slowed down. I know these two, from years of hosting this event. He actually flew B17s in World War II, and when he danced with his wife, the younger women gravitated towards them, taking pictures. “What really is this thing called love?” They seemed to be asking. It must look like that. It lasts. Let me take a picture of it.

I’m a sentimental fool, of course, and the music made me even more so. My wife was holding two of our grandchildren on her lap.

Love is a furious thing. It is blinding in its beauty. If you do it right, (and I think most of us get it wrong most of the time), the fire burns hot and then mellows, and you find yourself an old man, laughing deliriously at the sight of your grandchildren, and still anxious to take your wife home.

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