Teaching My Granddaughter to Dance

When I was a girl, my father would put a record on every Sunday after church and dance with my mother in the living room. All of us children would join in, tripping over each other.

Now I am seventy-four, and every Sunday my granddaughter Camila comes to visit. Last month she asked me to teach her to dance like I used to.

So I put on one of my father's old records. She stepped on my feet. I stepped on hers. We laughed so hard we had to sit down. Then we got back up and tried again.

Now it is our Sunday tradition. She is getting good. She spins better than I do now, but she still holds my hands for the slow parts.

My father has been gone a long time. But when that music plays and Camila is twirling across my living room, I feel him right there with us. Joy lives on through the people we teach it to.