This one time, when I was in high school, my mom went to a Halloween dance with me.

It wasn’t strictly a high school dance or anything – anybody could have dressed up and gone to the dance in our local community hall and danced to a deejay who played actual cassette tapes.

My mom loved to dance. And maybe the opportunity was just too good to pass up so she cobbled together a costume from our tickle trunk. It was kinda weird – a zebra head and an elephant suit. But it was the perfect disguise: she was unrecognizable.

I don’t think we went together to the dance. I’m pretty sure she walked the two-and-a-half blocks to the hall by herself. I found my own way with my friends. I don’t think I particularly wanted to go with my mom and I think part of her strategy of anonymity was not to tag along with me either.

My mom wasn’t discriminatory when it came to dancing – the rock-n-roll music of the ’80s suited her just fine when she wanted to bust a move. And seriously, she got on the dance floor that night and barely left. (She left the slow dances to twitterpated teenage couples.)

My mom wasn’t a particularly playful person. She wasn’t uber-serious but she wasn’t one to act goofy, either. And I really don’t remember her dressing up before that or ever again.

For one night (and one night only!) she let her inner zebra/elephant take over.

If you happened to watch her, you could tell she was having a ball. She never spoke to anyone. I danced with her a couple times and people asked me who she was but I never let on. I just shrugged my shoulders and acted like I regularly boogied down with hybrid animals.

At the end of the evening, when the lights turned up, she took off her mask and just laughed when people recognized her. And then like Cinderella, she slipped away home.

If there was one thing my mother knew, it was that she knew what she liked. She loved her family, her garden, her home. She loved being a farmer. She loved the good old days that she grew up in.

And definitely, she loved to dance.