Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I am sick and tired of dancing with you!” The hurt on his face did not escape me, but the words were out, and I could not call them back. I ran to my room sobbing hysterically.

We did not dance together after that night. I

found other partners, and my father waited up for me after dances, sitting in his favorite chair, clad in his flannel pajamas. Sometimes he would be asleep when I came in, and I would

wake him, saying, “If you were so tired, you should have gone to bed.”

“No, no,” he’d say. “I was just waiting for you.”

Then we’d lock up the house and go to bed.

My father waited up

for me all through my

high school and college years, while I danced my way out of his life.

One night, shortly

after my first child was

born, my mother called to tell me my father was ill. “A heart problem,” she

said. “Now, don’t come. It’s three hundred miles. Besides, it would upset your father. We’ll just have to wait. I’ll let you know.”

My father’s tests showed some stress, but a proper diet restored him to good health. Little things, then, for a while. A disc problem in the back, more heart trouble, a lens implant for cataracts. But the dancing did not stop. My mother wrote that they had

joined a dance club. “You remember how your father loves to dance.”Yes, I

remembered. My eyes filled up with remembering.

When my father retired, we mended our way back together again; hugs and kisses were common when we visited each other. But my father did not ask me to dance. He danced with the grandchildren; my daughters knew how to waltz

before they could read.

“One, two, three and

one, two, three,” my

father would count out, “won’t you come and waltz

with me?” — beliefnet.com