“May I have this dance?” my oldest son, Grant, asked a darling young French girl on the streets of Florence, Italy on a warm August night.

We were walking the streets at sundown, after all the day-trip tourists had left the city. Most of the stores were closed. The street bazaars had been dismantled, and the miles of “genuine Italian leather” goods had been hidden away for the evening.

“Only residents and die-hard tourists are here now,” said the manager of a restaurant that only opens for dinner. “We prefer that clientele,” he continued. “They’re not looking for bargains. They prefer quality.”

He then told me to come back in half an hour and my table would be ready.

So my party of eight – which included my two sons and my wife, her father, mother, sister, and niece – circled the block in an effort to kill time.

Florence is a remarkable city. Ten million people will visit Florence this year to gawk at the monuments and cathedrals, to admire the architecture, and to buy genuine Italian leather goods. Many will know Florence as the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. Fewer will know it as the “cradle of the Renaissance.”

But, for me and my family, and for a couple dozen innocent bystanders, we’ll forever know Florence as the city of “The Dance.”

My family and I turned the corner just as the sun was ducking behind one of the many cathedrals in the city. It wasn’t a famous cathedral like the Duomo – also known as the Cattedrale di Santa Maria. We knew that because there weren’t many people around. We also knew that because the street performers, who would have otherwise been brushed away by the police, were allowed to practice their crafts unmolested in the plaza in front of this cathedral.

There was a painter on one corner, a fortune-telling gypsy on another. A magician had teamed up with a juggler in order to attract attention on the third corner. But my curiosity and my ears were drawn to the fourth corner, where an acoustic guitar player was sitting in a folding chair and effortlessly strumming the notes to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

A guitar case lay open in front of the musician. It had been peppered with a couple of five-euro notes and several coins, whose job it was to beg other notes and coins to join them. And in front of the case was a young French girl – maybe four years old, the same age as my niece.

She was dancing.

It wasn’t the typical rhythmic gyrations of a four-year-old. This girl had taken lessons. She flowed in time with the music. Each movement had meaning and purpose. She felt the music. And she expressed those feelings through dance. And like a typical four-year-old girl, she loved the attention of the two dozen or so onlookers that had gathered.

When the song ended, the crowd applauded. Several onlookers stepped forward to drop a contribution into the guitar case. Grant, my six-foot two-inch, 195-pound, baseball-playing college freshman son, took a one-euro coin from his pocket and stepped forward to drop it into the case.

I grabbed Grant by the arm and said, “Son, you can do better than that.”

He looked at me the way most of the Italians look when I try to speak their language. He didn’t understand what I was saying.

“Grant,” I said with a wink, “You know how to dance.”

You could almost see the light bulb explode above his head. Grant knew I was talking about a previous vacation we took to Japan, when Grant and his two best friends spent their daily train fare on ice cream. And they had no money to get back to our hotel.

I refused to bail them out. Instead, I told them to find a legal way to come up with the money to buy a train ticket.

So my son and his two best friends – all sixteen years old at the time – performed what can only be described as an avant garde version of Swan Lake in front of the Tokyo Dome (after the Tokyo Giants baseball game).

They made it back to the hotel with a few yen to spare.

This time, though, Grant was on his own. He didn’t have his best friends with him to dilute the attention. He was hesitating. So, I said, “Son, you’re in a foreign country. No one here will ever see you again. You have a chance to give everyone here a story to tell for the rest of their lives. And you can help make this guitar player more money in one evening than he’s earned all month.”

“Plus,” I said, “I’ll give you 50 bucks to do it.”

Grant was sold.

He walked on over to the four-year-old dancing French girl. He bowed and extended his arm. And, just as the guitar player started strumming Andrea Bocelli’s version of “Con Te Partirò”, Grant asked the young girl, “May I have this dance?”

The young girl blushed. She covered her mouth with her hand. And she turned to look at her parents for advice.

Her parents were smiling and making a pushing gesture with their hands, “Aller de l’avant,” they said. “Go ahead.”

The young girl picked up the corners of her skirt. She curtsied. And she grasped Grant’s hand – to the delight of the crowd.

Now, I’d love to tell you that what followed was a precise performance of a waltz. But, let’s be serious. We’re talking about a four-year-old child and a nineteen-year-old clumsy jock.

But what the dance lacked in precision, it more than made up for in enthusiasm.

Though he had less training than his four-year-old partner, Grant led the dance. He did some version of a waltz which was a combination of a box-step and a running man. He lifted the girl into the air a couple of times – which delighted the child and the crowd. And the girl responded by grabbing hold of Grant’s waist and running in circles a few times while Grant performed the “Saturday Night Fever” move.

All the while the musician played with purpose. You could almost hear Bocelli himself singing…

Con te partirò
Su navi per mari
Che, io lo so,
No, no, non esistono più,
Con te io li rivivrò.
Con te partirò.
Io con te.

As the song ended, Grant and the four-year-old girl stood maybe two feet away from each other. Grant bowed. The girl curtsied.

The girl then ran towards Grant and hugged his leg. Grant lifted her up above his head and then lowered her down for a hug.

The crowd went nuts.

As I was clapping, thinking about how this was a great way to spend 50 bucks, I looked over at my wife.

The sun was down, yet Gabriela was wearing sunglasses. So, I knew she was crying.

This was our last vacation with Grant before he heads off for college. And with his baseball career in front of him, Gabriela and I both know we probably won’t get to travel with Grant for the next four years. His summers will be spent playing summer-league baseball.

The guitar player collected a bunch of tips that night – maybe more than he’d collected all month long. The young French girl and her family have a memory that should last for many, many years. The onlookers have a story to tell about their visit to Florence that nobody else can tell.

My oldest son has a similar story he can think about whenever he’s feeling nostalgic for his family during his freshman year of college. He also has my 50 bucks.

Most importantly though, my wife has an exclamation point of an experience to mark our time together as a family.

No single dance has ever meant more.

Best regards and good trading,

Jeff Clark

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