I Wanna Dance with You Tonight on this Harvest Moon

Just finished a sweet little novel titled Dancing at the Harvest Moon by K. C. McKinnon. Okay, yes, I read chicklit. What of it? A good story is a good story, and I don't feel that every book I read has to be deeply philosophical. I love a good romance as much as I love a good mystery or a good thriller or a good bit of Litriture. So, anyway, I read this little book, and it was, well, sweet. I enjoyed it. The author has a real talent for writing beautiful sentences which string together into beautiful paragraphs that express the heartache and longing that can occur to all of us who have experienced the heavy hand of life on us. Let's face it, once forty or fifty winters have crawled across your soul, you understand something about loss, about pain, about heartache. You've been injured, been seriously ill, known the death of a loved one, the pain of a broken heart, had your world shaken, questioned your faith, doubted your purpose or your sanity. And if you haven't, well, then ain't you the lucky one. The rest of you know what I'm talking about.

This is the story of Maggie, a forty-something English professor from Kansas City, whose husband runs off with his young paralegal after 25 years of marriage. A year later, Maggie decides to sell the house she raised her two daughters in and go back to Canada in search of the first love of her life, Robbie, who she met when she was in college waitressing at the Harvest Moon dance hall on the shores of Little Bear Lake. When she arrives, she finds the Harvest Moon has been closed down and her beloved Robbie has died only a couple of years earlier. Intent on creating a new life for herself, she uses the proceeds from the sale of her home to buy and renovate the old dance hall, with the help of her old friend Claire and Robbie's son Eliot, who bears a striking resemblance to his dead father. Well, it don't take a rocket scientist to figure out where the story's gonna go from there. Maggie falls in love with Eliot - DUH - at first because he reminds her so much of Robbie, but later because he's Eliot. However, she's racked with guilt because of the age difference between them and riven with doubts as to her own reasons for loving him. Of course, after much agonizing, she comes to terms with all of this and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

And therein is what I like about these stories - the happily ever after part. Don't we all want to live happily ever after? Who among us wants to suffer and grieve and lose someone we love yet again? And yet, we will. We don't get to live happily ever after. Or do we? May that just depends on what your definition of happy is. I know more than one person who thinks that happiness is something that will come to them if they move to another town, try a new major, get a different job, find a new partner, and so they are always chasing happiness. That's a recipe for a lifetime of disillusionment. Because happiness is a conscious decision we all make, not something we find waiting for us somewhere like the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You can chase that one your whole life and never be one step closer to true happiness. Because true happiness is something you have to decide to be. You choose to be happy, no matter what comes in your life, no matter how many rocks you find in the road - and you will find them - no matter how dark and rainy the days may get. It's entirely up to you as to whether you are going to let it all overwhelm you and quit or whether you will shake it off and keep walking down that long, lonesome road. And, remember, this from one who has had to deal with his share of not only rocks but boulders as well.

I also enjoy reading these fluffy chicklit stories about finding a new love or rediscovering and old lost love, because I rediscovered my old lost love - Michelle. And a lot of Dancing at the Harvest Moon captured how I felt about Michelle during those years so long ago when we first loved each other and the loss I felt down through the years that we were separated. Fortunately for both of us, we were still on this side of the sod when we found each other. Otherwise, though I'd still be choosing happiness, my life would be a lot lonelier now, my song a much more melancholy one. And I know the same is true for Michelle.