Twinkle Toes
This entry was posted on 11/14/2008 8:28 PM and is filed under blather.
Pat "Twinkle Toes" Pivec, tap dancer extraordinaire, won her long battle with Alzheimer's this week. There's only one possible outcome to such a fight and like everything she did in life, Pat died with grace and dignity, surrounded by hordes of admiring fans, most of whom didn't call her "Twinkle Toes", but "Grandma".
I met her in 1966. I was in first grade at St. Thomas the Apostle school and she was the gym teacher. I remember her putting a 45 on a tiny little record player and leading us all in the Chicken Fat dance. When class was over and we had all broken a healthy sweat, she told us it was time for lunch and that she was going home to feed her "kids and grandkids." I laughed. I was six years old and I knew a good joke when I heard one. You could be a mom or a grandma, but not both. That was just crazy talk. Apparently I had no idea how one became a grandma.
Patty Mae Dickey was a visionary. She never needed the Women's Movement to empower her; she was born empowered. She found her first true love at the age of four, when she was introduced to tap dancing. Eighty years later, the stroke which left her wheelchair bound couldn't stop her from tapping her feet whenever there was music. When WWII broke out, Pat enlisted. She joined the Waves and absolutely loved her years in the Navy. She took the opportunity to travel around the country a bit and she loved being out in the great world and entertaining.
When the war was over, she came home and opened a dance studio. Gloria Steinem was a pimply faced adolescent and The Feminine Mystique wasn't even a glimmer in Betty Friedan's eye when Pat declared herself master of her own destiny. She would spend her life teaching, dancing and entertaining. Not for her were marriage and a houseful of snot nosed kids!
God laughed.
And sent her directly across the path of Frank Pivec, a bohemian charmer who not only matched Pat's wit and love of life, but who brought with him...a houseful of snot nosed kids.
Pat's Mom was delighted! Patty Mae was the only one of her five daughters to marry a Catholic, and Pat married four of them.
In this story, the widower married the Fairy God Mother. She was beautiful, glamorous and music followed everywhere she went.
Not satisfied with a house half full of snot nosed kids, Pat and Frank added five more before she volunteered to teach gym at her kids' school, and met me; a strange, silent, freckle faced six year old who grew up to be the only other woman on earth who could tell her son Jay what to do.
I loved my Mother in law.
I would've wanted to hang out with her even if I hadn't married her son. She was wise, funny, sarcastic, kind and salty. Only once did I ever hear her say an unkind word about anyone. She called him a "fart-blossom" and believe me, he deserved it. When our kids were little, Jay used to work camps all summer and the kids and I would stay with Pat and Frank. Pat and I used to sit up late at night, enjoying the peace and quiet and talking. She told me stories about herself that Jay didn't even know. We laughed a lot!
Once, when we lived in Montana, she took the train out to visit us. There was some kind of gala fun raiser at the college. Pat didn't know a soul there when the evening started but by the end of it, she was not only the belle of the ball, she was the toast of the town!
Jay got his love of sports from his Dad, but he got his love of music, and his ability to work a crowd, from his Mom. She was the only one I ever knew who could get the best of Jay not just occasionally, but constantly. She drove him nuts and he adored her.
It was hard to watch such a person dwindle away through a disease like Alzheimer's. Coward that I am, I didn't visit her as much as I could have in the last few years. I let everyone else do it, and they did. Her children and grandchildren visited her every day. She hadn't known any of us for a long time. One of the last lucid things she said to me was about Frank, who died in '93.
"He's waiting for me." she said, pointing out the door. "You remember. Frankie, that cute little guy I used to belong to."
Okay, maybe that wasn't exactly lucid, but I knew what she meant.
When Frank got sick, the last two years of his life, she and I used to sit up late and talk about it. Not what was wrong, how he was doing, etc. but why. Why does a loving, all powerful and benevolent God allow his children to suffer like that? Pat knew a lot more about suffering than I hope I ever do. We came to the conclusion that God lets us suffer illness to remind us that our bodies are not ourselves. We are more than flesh and blood and sometimes it takes sickness and pain to discover or remember that.
For years now, we've all wondered what the point of a long slow death like Pat's could be. She wasn't in pain, she just wasn't there. What's the point of taking this woman, so full of life, joy and music, and robbing us of her, one small thing at a time?
In the last couple of days, I've actually come up with an answer to that.
This has been a year of new babies. So far, we've added three to the family tree and two more will arrive before Christmas. When there is a baby expected in a family, as the due date approaches, you begin to anticipate the phone call. Under normal circumstances, if the phone rings in the deep of night, it sends a chill down your spine; nothing good ever happens in the middle of the night. But when a baby is expected, the ring of the phone reminds you that some good things do happen in the middle of the night.
When a person dies suddenly, it's a tragedy. It's unexpected. The shock of it hurts like cold water on the face. But when a person is diagnosed with a terminal illness, death is expected. We are allowed to plan for it, look forward to it. In that way, illness is a gift. You get the advantage of being able to put your affairs in order, set your priorities and say goodbye. Pat's illness took years. Alzheimer's robbed us of every aspect of who she was, until I, at least, found myself anticipating that phone call with hope.
Death is the same as birth.
The way I see it, Pat went to Heaven one piece of herself at a time. Maybe that day she told me about Frankie, waiting at the door, a bit of her went with him. By the end, all of her was gone and by the last day, all that was left to do was to turn off the lights and lock the door.
And we all got a chance to say goodby.
That was a gift.
Shuffling off this mortal coil wasn't really Pat's style; she was more of a buck and wing gal.
So Bing and Fred, tell Mr. Miller to fire up the band; Twinkle Toes is ready to dance again!
