Dancing with Daisy

We were putting the roof back on, when who should come screeching around the corner of the barn, wailing like a jealous banshee, but Daisy. I opened my mouth to holler at her; when I closed it, it was gum on gum. The next morning, there were 28 new icebergs out in the middle of the bay. When he finds a photograph of his grandfather as a young man, Liam is full of questions. But that’s just fine, because Grampy has a story to spin with every answer. On a fall day in 1962, he tells Liam, he had a run-in with a nasty girl in search of a dance partner; Daisy was her name. What follows is a tall tale about Grampy’s tango with a hurricane, and all those signs of aging – the wrinkles, the stooped back, the croaky voice, the false teeth – can be chalked up to Daisy’s persistence and Grampy’s refusal to dance. Of course, it takes a talking to from Nana to get that Daisy to blow off elsewhere.