Amadou and Miriam

She put on the disc and assumed her post at the kitchen sink. The music rose, a quiet beat behind the despairing sigh of covered counters and un-vacuumed floor. The music rose undaunted by her despair and self-recrimination. The music rose and washed over her until it found one secret soft place in her soul and slipped down into her aching joints and stiffened frame.

She moved. Her hips sway in gentle circles. Her back flowed to keep the time. Her hands reached, like she once danced to Bob Marley. She was the girl who would follow Lloyd Cole anywhere. In that moment, she was all the women she'd ever been, the punk princess and the mother who grieved over dishes and the little girl who thought Janis Joplin could hold up the sky.

She danced, like someone who'd forgotten that the whole world was watching. She remembered her mother and her guitar and Cotton Eyed Joe.

They watched, with a touch of shame, her mother hips swinging and abandon on her face. She was familiar but they didn't completely know her. She was the mother who wants things done right now and the girl who danced all night. She was easy and the pain that has weighed on her could not keep pace with Mon Amour, ma cherie. She is laughing now.

They giggle and tease her just a little. But they will remember they day she wasn't broken. And she danced with pretty Thai hands, and stomping feet from Africa, and Caravanning hips like they've never seen before. They will remember that she was no ballerina but the music moved right through her and she was all the women she'd ever been in the kitchen while they watched.