It cannot be done while thinking of the mortgage, or the children, or the shift.

It demands the one thing a busy life is always short of, which is presence — two people fully here, fully turned toward each other, for the length of a song.

Of course it was the first thing to go.

It was the first thing that required us to stop, and turn, and pay attention to each other and nothing else, and there was never time for that, there was never time for anything that could not be done while also doing three other things.

So the dancing went, and I understand now that the dancing was never really the point; the dancing was just the visible sign of the thing underneath it, the attention, the turning-toward, and when the dancing stopped it was because the turning-toward had stopped, and a marriage without turning-toward is just two people standing on the same floor, no longer moving together, waiting for a song that neither of them will start.