I’m driving down Route 394 on the west side of the lake here in Western New York, 50 miles from the Canadian border. The ice is gone now on our glacial lake, 20 miles of it end to end. The winter with it. The sky is full of birds, soaring, cawing, wild with spring.

On comes a song some old Bee Gees tune, “You Should Be Dancing,” their high pitched harmonies and the tinselly hi-hat cymbals, tap tap tap a tap tap. one two three four — one two three four. It’s the bottom of all rhythm. One night John Travolta performed that little four step on the “Jimmy Fallon Show,” his hips forward, his steps light and perfect? Like that. Like that.

Canada Geese fill the bay on a day when winter has finally retreated in upstate New York. Some trees have red unfurled buds that will soon be green. I turn up the music though I don’t even like disco, but this song has got hold of me.

Ah, I think, it’s that beat. I’m back on the dance floor, 14, with my first boyfriend. It’s almost a film on the car’s windshield I can watch, in technicolor. Al Burns and I doing the “Peppermint Twist,” so long ago, in a small Ohio town no one can pronounce.

Al is shaking it up as only true dancers can, rhythm in his heels; he’s got something I don’t have though I’m a good dancer, better than most and I know it. I’ve got a little hauteur going on. It feels good. I’ve studied dance since I was four and can tap and ballet with the best of them.

Al’s got something more, some gift for nonchalant perfection, some absolute confidence. Following his lead, I am weightless and perfect too. When he spins me around, he may whisper in my ear, pulling me close. He’s smiling. And I steal his confidence and his strut. I’m swooning really, though I pretend it’s dance. I might fall down if he let me go.

But young love doesn’t last, does it? And so, later, long after we had let go of one another for good, I drove up to an outside dance on the edge of Lake Erie one hot night, lights against darkness, the wind coming in off the lake smelling of fish and sweat, and there mid-floor is Allan Burns.

There’s no one else visible in my eye line. He’s dancing with Nancy Jones–head majorette, best clarinet–her beautiful dark head tossed back, her full mouth gleaming. Big Al turns her just so and just so, their hands touching then loosing, Al swinging on air. He is smiling too. I could catch the sun from it.

I see it now, 50 years away.

Sometime in this age of Facebook, we find each other again, ferret out the lives we’ve missed, study photos. I’m in Florida now, sitting in my screened room in the sun. He calls me from California. We spend hours sharing the lives we missed — our spouses and children, our families, our life moments. The first time he calls me, he says my name and begins to cry.

He can’t talk through his crying. Finally, he stops and says something like, There you are. All these years. My god. I don’t tell him this, but I know that much of the woman I became grew from dancing with Allan.

I felt him in my bones all these long years, a kind of heady rhythm, one, two, three, four, dancing me through life when life was hard and when it was boring and when it was wondrous.

The parts I trusted in myself to turn and counterturn, strut and to stand tall, all owed to him, that young man from Ohio, number 25 on the football team, the one who punched a bully in the mouth for me, the one who ironed his light blue shirts and put a straight seam in his tan pants every single day. I knew Allan Burns when I was 12 and 13 and 14. He was my boyfriend and best friend.

The dance was over. We let go. But we’re still dancing.