"We want you to be happy. Don't live inside the gloom."

Last night was my first Phish concert.

It was one of those perfect hot summer nights.

I let my hair down, accepted a grass ring from the mister, set all my worries aside and crowded in amongst the hippies to let the cool grass sink between my toes.

Then I danced. I danced the whole night away.

Groovin.

Jiving.

Jumping.

Shaking.

As much as my little free lovin' hippee spirit desired.

Typically Jim frowns upon these types of outburst.

He finds my extroverted personality combined with my loose hips to be a bit embarrassing.

Don't blame him. I think it's Catholic guilt set deep in his soul.

He's even been known to pull me off the dance floor at a wedding, claiming I was disrupting the crowd with my lack of skill in the Polish polka.

And can you imagine the night his Grandpop called my 'snake hips' at his cousin's wedding?!

Little does Jim know that I was almost always the first, the one and the only person dancing in the middle of our gymnasium at every school dance.

I've been seen completely sober on bar tops. I danced on my dads feet long after my pigtails were gone.

There was always music in the kitchen accompanied by swaying and swinging to my mother's steady "step, touch, step, touch" method.

And the brief moment in time that our high school had a dance team, I danced in a black leather dress and white go-go boots at a basketball game, resulting in a shower of dollar bills from the stands.

None of which has ever embarrassed or shamed me.

I've never particularly cared what people think when they see my own personal promenade taking place. Perhaps I never knew that I should care.

I find it to be so freeing, both physically and mentally.

So much so that I've declared that there will be more frolic, more rock, more spin, more boogie, and maybe even a little two-step in my days.

Just because.