THE HARLEM SWAGGER

Travel has taught me that the people I remember most are rarely the ones I planned to meet. Sometimes they appear for only a moment. They say one sentence. Offer one smile. Cross your path for less than a minute. Yet somehow, they leave carrying a little piece of your heart.

New York.

November.

A Sunday morning.

My daughter and I were heading to Harlem, the beating heart of African American culture, determined to experience a famous Sunday service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

I wasn’t there because I was Baptist.

I was there because I have always believed music is another language for the soul.

Every guidebook carried the same advice: Arrive early. Tourists outnumber worshipers.

We tried, but the New York subway had other ideas.

A delay in Midtown...another at Columbus Circle.

By the time we climbed the stairs into Harlem, the church steps were already crowded with women dressed as though Sunday was the grandest celebration of the week.

Elegant suits.

White gloves.

Spectacular hats adorned with feathers, ribbons and flowers. Every color imaginable danced beneath the soft winter sunshine.

At the entrance a largish gentleman stood dressed in a beautifully tailored pin-striped suit.

His shoes shone.

His smile didn’t.

“Canna letya in.”

I wasn’t sure whether I’d heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry. You can let us in?”

“Canna.”

“You can’t?”

“Canna.”

He leaned closer.

“I pudda four hundred tourists innerear today.”

Then he shrugged.

“Namore room.”

“We’ll come back next Sunday,” I said, knowing full well my plane would fly out of New York on Wednesday.

He nodded, already welcoming the next hopeful visitor.

The tourists were easy to spot. They were the only people without hats.

Harlem wore Sundays differently.

Not because anyone had to.

Because it mattered.

There was pride in the way people dressed.

Grace in the way they carried themselves.

The music spilling from church windows wasn’t simply heard. It was lived.

With the service no longer an option, my daughter and I wandered through the surrounding streets instead.

That’s when I noticed it.

A certain kind of walk.

Not just one person.

Everyone!

Harlem wasn't in a hurry.

People moved with an easy rhythm that seemed completely untouched by New York’s usual frantic pace.

Shoulders rolled gently.

Hips found an effortless beat.

Arms swung as though life had given them all afternoon.

I called it The Harlem Swagger.

A few subway stops south, Midtown was all elbows, briefcases and urgency. Business people striding as though they were racing invisible clocks. Their bodies arrived before their smiles.

Harlem felt different.

Nobody looked late.

Nobody appeared to be chasing tomorrow.

The street itself seemed to breathe more slowly.

I decided I wanted to try it.

How hard could it be?

Very.

The moment I got my shoulders moving, my hips forgot what they were doing. When my hips found the rhythm, my knees staged a protest.

Crossing at the lights, my entire body tangled itself into something between a dance and a mechanical malfunction.

“Darn,” I muttered.

My daughter laughed.

A man, smartly dressed, walking towards me grinned.

“Whatup, lady?”

“I can’t find my swagger.”

“Huh?”

He kept walking.

I kept trying.

A younger man approached came from behind.

“Whatup, Momma?”

“I can’t find my swagger.”

He laughed.

“Hey Momma...cute as.”

As he disappeared down the street, I turned to my daughter.

“Did he say I was cute...or that I have a cute arse?”

We buckled over with laughter. The kind that only mothers and daughters share.

The kind that bounces off buildings and stays with you long after you’ve gone home.

I began to think, perhaps I’d found my Harlem Swagger after all.

Not in my hips.

Not in my shoulders.

But in laughter.

Back at the hotel that evening, I opened my laptop to find an email from a friend. She had attached a poem written by a teenage girl dying from cancer. The title of the poem, Slow Dance.

Her words stopped me in my tracks.

Harlem came back to me. The people who wore their finest for Sunday song.

The people who walked as though there was nowhere more important to be.

The strangers who smiled without needing a reason.

“Life is not a race... hear the music before the song is over.”

Sometimes the places we travel to don’t give us what we came looking for. Instead, they quietly hand us the lesson we didn’t know we needed.

Harlem never gave me the gospel service I’d crossed New York to hear. It gave me something better. A reminder that life isn’t measured by how quickly we move through it. It’s measured by whether we remember to dance while we’re here.

from BECOMING SOLO: a memoir by Julie Stafford