I am dancing with my father at my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. The band is playing an old-fashioned waltz as we move gracefully across the floor. His hand on my waist is as guiding as it always was, and he hums the tune to himself in a steady, youthful way. Around and around we go, laughing and nodding to the other dancers. We are the best dancers on the floor, they tell us. My father squeezes my hand and smiles at me. As we continue to dip and sway, I remember a time when I was almost three and my father came home from work, swooped me into his arms and began to dance me around the table. My mother laughed at us, told us dinner would get cold. But my father said, “She’s just caught the rhythm of the dance! Dinner can wait!” And then he sang out, “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun,” and I sang back, “Let’s get those blues on the run.” That night, he taught me to polka, waltz and foxtrot while dinner waited.We danced through the years. When I was five, my father taught me to “shuffle off to Buffalo.” Later we won a dance contest at a Campfire Girls Round-Up. Then we learned to jitterbug at the USO place downtown. Once my father caught on to the steps, he danced with everyone in the hall: the women passing out doughnuts, even the GIs. We all laughed and clapped our hands for my father, the dancer. One night when I was fifteen, lost in some painful, adolescent mood, my father put on a stack of records and teased me to dance with him.“C’mon,” he said, “let’s get those blues on the run.” I turned away from him and hugged my pain closer than before. My father put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped out of the chair, screaming.