My husband occasionally admonishes me for staring at people when we are out in public. He is right. I do stare but sometimes when I see something so adorably cute I can’t make myself look away. Tonight at Target I saw a family come through the door, Mom, Dad and four little girls. Dad was still dressed in his Army fatigues. As Mom went to retrieve a shopping cart one of the daughters said “Look Daddy” and pointed to the security camera monitor. Then they did the adorably cute thing that made me stare. Dad and all four daughters started dancing around and watched themselves on the monitor. I don’t mean they were just acting funny, they were full on dancing. Dad stretched out his arms and started doing the wave. The girls were booty shaking and spinning around. They didn’t talk to each other; they just saw the monitor and started dancing. Obviously they’ve done this before. It must just be something they do. It was hysterical. It was magical. I have very few memories of my dad and the ones that I do have are not magical by any sense of the word. My father abandoned his wife and five children when I was nine years old. The lack of my father in my life affected me profoundly. When I see a good Dad like the one I saw tonight it touches my heart in a way that is hard to put in to words. Some day those girls will be grown women and they will more than likely have many similar experiences to the ones I’ve had in my life like career, family, etc. They’ll sit around with their sisters and tell stories of their childhood like I do with my sisters and share memories. But those lucky little girls will have one memory I never will…they'll say “remember when we danced with Daddy?”
