The divine Mrs. Kimball

 ~

Mrs. Kimball

She was known to many as Mrs. Kimball.
I knew her as Mom.
My children called her Gramma. 


Today I woke up at 4:30 am, which is pretty darn close to the time Mrs. Kimball died 5 years ago to the date. So this morning I got up, got dressed, went to the gym, and listened to tango and flamenco music while I exercised. You see, I can't dance like she did.
Oh my, could she dance.

On one of her many many visits from Texas to see her Minnesota grandkids, my children (then 3, 6, and 8 years old) decided we should have a dance in our tiny living room the night she arrived. We selected a CD I had purchased in hopes of teaching myself the Lambada, and then the kids turned off the lights and insisted we place a candle on the floor. Round and round and round we danced, casting crazy shadows on the curtains (what must the nuns who lived next door have thought?! ) while Gramma dazzled us all with her latin moves.


So this one's for Mrs. Kimball, who, at 83 years of age and all of 85 pounds, still knew her children, their husbands, and her grandchildren, despite her "touch of Alzheimer's," and who still loved to dance.

. . . . .

                                   Prayer
                                   by Mary Oliver


                                  May I never not be frisky,
                                  May I never not be risque.


                                  May my ashes, when you have them, friend,
                                  and give them to the ocean,


                                 leap in the froth of the waves,
                                 still loving movement,


                                still ready, beyond all else,
                                to dance for the world.

Mrs. Kimball strolls East Beach in Galveston during the 1970s with her dear friend, Mr. Bateman.

And Galveston is where today she leaps "in the froth of the waves, still loving movement."