Daddy's Little Girl

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!  I feel your spirit every day, and I know you were beside Mom and Danny in the audience last week as my made my "debut" as a tap dancer. Today, as I honor your fifty four years of being my father, many memories rush my brain.

Standing on your feet while you sat, holding my hands in your firm grasp so I wouldn't fall as I played "circus girl"-- reaching as far back as my three-year-old body would allow, twirling from side to side as  you added the finishing touch to my performance -- "Ta-da!"

Again, standing on your feet, this time as your dance partner. Try as you may, I never did get the hang of your quirky, jazzy rhythm, but I sure did love practicing.

Handing me a bouquet of roses following my high school performance in "My Three Angels," where I was required to faint and later, you told me, you wanted to rush up there and wake me up.

Fast forward about 30+ years, where I sat, reading to a group of avid listeners, all white haired, all sitting in wheel chairs, you among them.  You may not have been able to follow the stories, but always, you were my biggest supporter. Smiling with pride, clapping when you could, and always a "nice job, sweetheart," even when the words became too soft to hear.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.  You were the best.

Joy

On Sunday, June 12, 2011, I nailed it. Two dances -- Queen of the Hop and Chicago. Perfect Irish step, perfect slaps, shuffles, ball changes, and yes -- the pinwheel.  I haven't felt this much joy since I didn't know any better.

Backstage, my fellow new beginners paced, practiced, ate Twizzlers like chips (Twizzlers being the official  snack of the Tap Pups), while I felt strangely comfortable both back stage and on stage. Perhaps another boat I missed?  The other being New York and the literary world. Makes you think what life would have been like, but then, to hear so many of my fellow Tap Pups opine about lost loves, bad marriages (the proceeds from the show itself go to the Domestic Violence shelter for the YWCA, so Vicki has had some crap in her life as well), fear of stepping out there again -- and here I sit, comfortably, in a thirty-year marriage on a half-acre of what was once Pennsylvania farmland, struggling to keep the arts alive in my life , never giving adultery or abuse or being unloved as much as a sniff.

I keep telling myself there is a reason New York never happened, and I never followed up on my stage ambitions until now. Perhaps the joy would have been sucked out of it early on, just as the joy I once felt for writing has been demoted to a glimmer of hope.

So for now, I'll revel in the moment of Sunday, June 12, where six months of practice culminated in two, two-minute dances, on stage, in front of a live audience, with my spectator tap shoes occupying the front line both times. And, I nailed it.

Can't wait for next season.