The music flowed, smooth as low tide in summer, the dancer swaying in time to the melody. When the tempo picked up, now lively as a hopping frog, the dancer bounced and bobbed, cheered on by the audience composed of the dancer’s siblings.

“Show’s over,” Mom said. “Bedtime.”

She scooped up the dancer-toddler who’s still learning to walk and “dances” to music clutching the couch cushions to keep from falling.

Even an infant, gathered into a parent’s arms and whirled around the room, seems to sense the rhythm of dance music, as does the grade-schooler who stands on her daddy’s shoes as he holds her hands and whisks her across the ballroom/kitchen floor.

I recall times as a child when Dad rolled up the wool area rug in the living room, pushed the furniture back, and he and Mom would dance across the hardwood floor. I was tickled but not surprised when a family member discovered an article in an Alaskan newspaper dated back when my parents were newlyweds recounting how they won a dance contest.

Through the years, the folks accumulated a variety of records they danced to. Want something lively? There were polkas with oompa-oompa tubas. Or country-western with Gene Autry crooning, “I’m back in the saddle again.” And not forgotten — the waltz, with Strauss’ “Blue Danube.”

My younger brothers and I joined our parents when they “schottisched” (Scottish folk music) around the room—”step, step, step, hop …”

A dance studio offered dance classes for children.

“Would you like to take lessons?” Mom asked.

“Yay! Tap dancing!”

“I was thinking more along the line of ballet,” Mom said.

I remembered when we stayed for a few months in an apartment on the top floor, and I loved to “tap dance” in my sturdy Oxford school shoes across the kitchen floor until the family below would beat their ceiling with a broom handle and holler for us to cut down the noise. I concluded Mom visualized me with tap shoes beating paths across her polished wooden floors.

I found ballet to be like a track and field event. I could leap high and far with the best of them. I might have lacked a smidgen in the graceful department. A minor problem — I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to leap left or leap right, which caused a few collisions during practice time.

Dance recital time. How exciting! Since I was one of the shorter students, I anticipated I’d be dancing in the front row, where I could spot my family and wave to them while dancing. Our class filed onto the stage as the teacher signaled us to reverse directions. A pause, and then the music for dancing flowers began. I realized the teacher had placed me BEHIND the tall girls.

My ballet career ended early in my life. I do have a greater appreciation for ballet each winter season, when I enjoy Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” including the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” with no dancer collisions.

Dancing did not end with ballet.

Seventh grade PE. The teacher/coach divided the course into segments: softball, volleyball, swimming, basketball, square dancing … SQUARE DANCING? Students objected to no avail.

The class formed dance squares. By now, most of the seventh-grade girls were taller than the boys. Partners did not gaze into each other’s eyes. Girls looked down on comb marks in the hair at the top of the boys’ heads.

We survived seventh grade dances and advanced to prom dances with more enthusiasm.

When the grandparents retired, they signed up for dance classes.

“May I have this dance?”