Mom and Dad Dancing

My mom and dad will take any opportunity to dance. They call it "jitterbugging," which is a region-specific term from what I can tell. They both grew up in South Jersey, and my mother lived in Philadelphia from 1944-1958 and as an adolescent hung out at the studios for American Bandstand. She tells stories of dance parties with her friends in the basement of the row house where they lived. 

My parents met at a dance, when my father was 22 and a senior at Rutgers in Camden, and my mother was 18 and working in an office. They were married a year later, in 1963. And they've been dancing ever since. I shot this video the day after Thanksgiving at Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Illinois. We were in the lodge after a day of hiking and a good dinner. A wedding was taking place in the other half of the lodge, and the music was quite loud. And the playlist was pretty good! It was only a matter of time before my parents danced. When "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison, they got up to dance. I had to replace the audio, but this music was one of the no-copyright clips available to merge on YouTube.

This is a time when it's nice not to be fifteen and mortified by one's parents. They've been dancing together for 48 years, and I wish them many more.