Moonlight Serenade

Thanks for everything, Mom

A lone G.I. stands in the middle of an empty dance floor.  A dim light coming from behind the bandstand silhouettes his person.  Facing the ballroom door, his right hand is extended almost to shoulder height.  There he waits.  And waits. 

It’s been twenty-two years.

Now, however – finally – a faint tapping…  Sixty beats to the minute?  …and the ballroom door swings open; a wedge of the floor is suddenly washed with light. 

There she stands, backlit and beautiful.  After just enough pause to allow the soldier to remove his wire-rims and rub his eyes in disbelief, she enters.  They meet under a swirl of spangles as someone curiously named “Tex” stirs the orchestra to life.

“Moonlight Serenade.”  Glenn Miller’s band.

6:15 AM on this day, October 19, 2017, his long wait has ended.

The couple floats on the music, the G.I. and the girl, Dad and now Mom, drifting from the light of the grandest dance floor anywhere into the shadows of forever.

Together.

o0o

Mom – “Secretarial Skills” – circa 1947

Dad – “Throwing the Mail” – circa 1951

© 2017

Church of the Open Road Press