My 10-year-old
My daughter and I do a dance. Sometimes the dance is steady and calm like a waltz, but other times it’s staccato like a tango.
I first felt my daughter dance in my apartment on the Westside of Chicago when I was pregnant. At night, underneath the unknown of what single motherhood would bring me, we would communicate as I ate dinner. She danced inside me, in celebration of nourishment. Sometimes she’d accompany on occasional DJ gigs, dancing with me as I made others dance in the night; I imagined her feeling the euphoria that music brings me.
In the mornings, when she was a baby, we watched Eebee Baby videos to the tune of “Mama’s Beat”, where the little colorful, dreaded stuffed animal in the videos encouraged babies to dance on their mama’s feet. She would put her newly walking feet on top of my more experienced, stable feet. We danced as her giggles erupted from her big round cheeks in our apartment. I held her up in those days, supporting her full body weight as she trusted me as a novice mother in her twenties with no idea of how to properly guide a growing being.
Soon, her steps got more stable, as she discovered the joy of jumping defiantly on top of my bed, grinning slyly with the assumption that gravity was nothing compared to mom’s comforting eyes and protection. She danced with me on mornings to go to preschool. I would change the lyrics to “Jingle Bell Rock” to include “Put on your gym shoes. Put on your socks” — adapted from a dance I did with my father in the mornings to the same tune.
As a single mother at a four-year university, my daughter came with me on Sundays to praise and worship services where I asked for God-like strength to finish my degree. These were the Sundays I danced to keep from crying and when I was so depleted that I couldn’t help but look up and dance in the supernatural collective voices and instruments surrounding us.
We’ve done many celebratory dances. We danced when I finished my finals, when she graduated preschool, won soccer games, the times I graduated, and when Obama was elected president.
Recently, the dance has been unsteady—an off-balance movement. My role had been the lead in our dances. I have normally written the notes on the stanzas. I have helped trace her steps, develop her language skills, and push her past her fears.
At 10 years old, she now takes lead many times. Underneath uncertainty, I have watched transition beginning to occur, one where awareness will forever change our dances. She changes song lyrics to unexpected humorous harmonies and critiques my dances in embarrassment. On hikes, she pushes me past my fear. Like contemporary dancers, contorting their bodies in emotive stories, her expressions are writing new realms of complexities into once composed steps—sometimes more solemn, contemplative, and disappointed,.
It’s a scary dance, but beautiful, heart-wrenching, inspiring, and mysterious. Even still, we dance. We’ll continue to dance the dances that will surely evolve ever-so unfamiliar and resilient.