Six months old, father dancing with me in the kitchen. A man racked with secrets, lies and hypocrisy, steps in rhythm, swirls my tiny body, lifts me in the air and catches me on his breastplate. I was his third born, born of a love affair outside of his "real life." I remember the white tiles of the kitchen floor that matched the white whiskers of his goatee. He was an old man already, but I could still feel the vitality of his masculinity as he moved about with me in total privacy. I remember the sheer joy and terror of being in the hands of something powerful enough to make my flesh feel entirely vulnerable and entirely protected at the same time. Some say that's the essence of fathering. I wouldn't know.

Thirty years later, three weeks after my first daughter is born, i have a dream where a younger version of my father sweeps me off my feet. Comes up to me from behind and lifts me up in the air and doesn't miss a beat. In the dream I never see his face, but I know it's him because our bodies fit together perfectly, almost as if one originated from the other. And because now that he's dead, as I move, he moves, in the spaces where spirit and flesh are no longer separated by generations. Some call that space heaven and earth colliding. I wouldn't know. In the dream, I feel a freedom that I have never felt in my creaturely life. I wake up crying, knowing this is the longing etched in my bloodline. To be free enough to dance.

I have spent most of my life thinking that the absence of my father was something internal to me. Something I had to fix because it was irrevocably wrong. This message of internal blemish is deeply connected to a message that women receive all of their lives; a message about their worth being determined solely by their connections to men. But the world teaches men to hate women. To simultaneously lust after them and want to kill them. So it is a connection that is elusive at best, impossible at worst. Something about being the mother of a daughter has given me infinite clarity into this nonsense, but most importantly I have forgiven myself  for internalizing a 30 year old lie about my own worthlessness. 

This morning I dance with my daughter, girl body to woman body, on the kitchen floor. I step in rhythm, swing her in circles. I throw her in the air and catch her on my breastplate. She delights, smile so wide it takes up her entire face. Our genders and our bodies may change throughout our lives. But this is enough, right here. We are free enough, just the two of us in the kitchen, no secrets, no drama, free enough to just dance, in the spirit of love. Together, entirely vulnerable and entirely protected.