Dancing with Daddy
by Jessica Exter, SUNY Cortland, November 29, 2007
As soon as I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day…, from The Temptations’ “My Girl,” rings through the catering hall, I stand up to dance with Daddy. We join hands, my fragile doll-feet rest upon his glossy patent-leather dress shoes. Daddy spins me around as I watch my frilly, white-polka dotted blue dress twirl. I look up at Daddy, expecting to find him scoping out the latest tray of hors d’oeuvres that are being presented to the bar mitzvah guests, but he’s looking down at me, smiling with cavernous dimples, a tear running down his cheek. I try to dance on the floor without Daddy’s boulder-like feet guiding me, but I trip and return to the comfort of his lead.
Eight years later, I sit at Daddy’s best friend’s wedding. I have on one and a half-inch heels with a dress that goes above my knees. Mom had bought me my first real bra a few weeks before. I keep my distance from my parents, to avoid being embarrassed. None of the other girls dance with their dads. Come to think of it, none of their dads talk to them when I visit.
“I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day…” starts sounding through the lead singer’s microphone. I get the impulse, but I don’t want the adults to think I’m a kid because I’m dancing with my dad. Daddy is nowhere to be seen. “I guess you’ll say what can make me feel this way?,” snakes through the dozen dinner tables. Out of the corner of my eye I notice someone walking towards me in a suit and patent-leather dress shoes. Realizing that Daddy didn’t forget “our song,” my lungs exhale. “Should we dance? It’s almost over,” Daddy exclaims. I couldn’t have jumped out of my seat any quicker if my dress was on fire. I leave my heels by my chair and run onto the dance floor. We connect hands, I rest my soft, innocent toes up against Daddy’s shoes, which have been worn less than half a dozen times in a decade, and look up at him. His hair is thinner, his forehead possesses a couple more creases, but it’s the same Daddy that I danced with to “My Girl” when I was four years-old. “Do you think your friends dance with their dads to “My Girl” at your age?,” Daddy asks me. I consider lying so that he can think that he’s a standard kind of dad, but I say, “Definitely not.” Daddy whispers, with the giggle a child makes when allowed to have a cookie before dinner, “I used to dream of having a daughter that would like the same music I like and be close enough to me to dance with me, even as a teenager.”
At age twenty-two, I haven’t had the opportunity to dance to “My Girl” with my dad in a couple years, but the music has never stopped. Taller, wiser and I’d like to believe more mature, I no longer need Daddy’s feet to show me where to go. But I do need his eyes and smile and words reassuring me that I’m dancing in the right direction.
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