A Note About Your Daddy

Little baby, we are both so excited to meet you, but your daddy wants to know you already. He coats his hands in Tummy Butter every night, rubs it into my belly, never can keep from saying, “Wow” - more to himself than to me. He says he wishes he could carry you, wishes he could feel you growing, and wants you to know how much he loves you, too. He talks to you, bends his lips down low to my stomach and asks you to give me a break, (the nausea is killing me), then kisses you... and me, too, I guess... who am I kidding?... he kisses you every night.

Your daddy is already taking care of you. He makes me fruit shakes every morning before he goes to work, shakes that I just can't stomach, but he pleads with me, “Just a couple of sips. For the baby.” He makes me toast when I need it, buys me ginger ale, lets me eat Papa John's and Pizza Hut even though he has put his foot down at McDonald's. He brings a bottle of water to the bathroom when I'm bent over the toilet and tries not to freak out when I cry for no reason – asked me yesterday if it was the hormones or the Golden Girls rerun I was watching. Your daddy makes me laugh, and makes me feel better. He can't wait til I get my energy back so that we can walk on the treadmill together at the gym... to make you strong.

Your daddy goes to every doctor's appointment with me, asks questions, puts his head right up to the monitor so that I can't see a thing. He had his iPhone out at the last visit, snapped a picture of the first sonogram image, the one where you were only .24 centimeters long, and emailed it to all of his guy friends and our families before the doctor had even left the room. He loved, loved, loved hearing your heartbeat – so fast, crazy fast – and held my hand tightly on the way home. He asked me, “Did you hear the doctor say that our child has the strongest heartbeat he's ever heard?” Hmmm... Somehow I missed that, but he just smiled and assured me it was so. Your daddy is already so proud.

Now your daddy is not perfect. He doesn't put things back where they go (I find spatulas in colanders and pot lids stacked on top of our plates). He leaves his underwear on the bathroom floor and I'm always finding his white t-shirts stuffed in our couch cushions. He gets too mad at the television during Kentucky games and is not a friend to drivers who honk at him. He's even expressed a strong resistance to changing your future diapers.

And your daddy wants to name you something I just can't allow. Of course, I want to name you something really charming that he just won't agree to. We laugh, go over the list he's started on his phone, say the names over and over, letting them roll off of our tongues. As we get to know you better, the perfect name will come. A family name maybe, a Bible name, or something we invent – we can't wait to start using your name – your daddy so eager to whisper it into my popped out little gut.

I tell you every day that I love you, but your daddy loves you, too. And he loves your momma so much. He strokes my hair when I can't sleep, lets me munch from a box of cereal by the bed at all hours of the night, and tells me every day that this is the most beautiful I've ever looked to him... even though I've never felt more tired, sick, pale, and pudgy. But he takes my picture once a week, wants to make a flip book later, and I find his eyes on me constantly. I don't want to embarrass you, little baby, but your daddy's eyes are glazed over and he is head over heels for us both.

Your daddy is so full of love. I can't wait to place you in his arms. I hope you have his blue eyes and his dimples and his soft blond hair. I hope you have his full bodied laugh and his hungry ambition. And I hope you are just as true.

Dirty (4th grade) Dancing

1987

Emily Petry's slumber party and Kimmy Wyatt is glued to the TV downstairs. She's watching Dirty Dancing... I'm not allowed to watch Dirty Dancing... but I think Kimmy Wyatt is the most grown-up, beautiful, perfect human being on the planet, so I cross-leg myself right down on the carpet beside her.

This is a story about Baby. She's growing up and she wants to make her parents proud, always do the right thing, and see more in people than other people see. Am I Baby?
I curl my knees up under my nightgown and hug them tight against my chest and can't think of any other place I'd rather be. Emily brings popcorn and starts talking to Jemma about the watermelon scene.

"Can you believe she just said, 'I carried a watermelon?'"

"I know."

I would like to ask them, at this time, what would be a better way to segue into the sweaty, sexy, outrageous club scene that she has stumbled upon, but don't. I imagine myself in Baby's Keds. I carried a watermelon. Okay. So? Is this embarrassing ‘cause she should have carried two?

Emily's mom calls down to see if we're okay and I think she's the coolest parent I've ever met. We can watch PG-13s, she doesn't consider "piss" a curse word, and lets us have the whole basement to ourselves!

Okay. The main girl dancer, Penny, is pregnant. My mouth drops open wide and none of us can believe it ‘cause a) she's not married and b) we're still not perfectly clear on how that even happens. She has some sort of botched surgery and Baby gets in trouble with her dad. Parents never seem to understand. I totally relate with Baby.

Now though - BABY GETS TO DANCE! I think that Patrick Swayze is the sexiest man I have ever seen and this movie, two years later, is what prompts me to secretly practice dancing in my full-length mirror at home before every school dance in middle school. I don't know what I'll do though if anyone ever tries that fingers down the inside of my arm thing. I just know I'll DIE of tickle tingles.

Pretty soon, Baby and Johnny are a couple and I am informed that the reason they are in his bed together is because they just had sex. Whoa. This is where my dear, precocious friend Emily takes the remote control and keeps rewinding the scene where Johnny gets out of bed. I SWEAR WE CAN ALMOST SEE HIS BUTT! This is the wildest slumber party ever. She has him getting out of bed, backing into bed, up and down, the sheets tossing as we see AT LEAST an inch of the top part of his right buttocks. It's incredible.

At the same time, I am gonna be so nervous if anyone ever tries to kiss me like he kissed her. I feel tingles. My body feels hot. Even Kimmy is sitting up straight in her bean bag chair. I really hope this movie leads to one of those boy talks later where I sit back and nod my head as the other girls gossip, (Emily's big sister has told her EVERYTHING about boys), while at the same time soaking up everything they say to ask my mom about later. Of course if she asks where I heard that stuff, I'll tell her from TV or from this girl in class who is super mean to me and whom I really hate.

Baby is slowly becoming my hero. She is sexy, but look! You can still be playful if you want without being a nerd! Baby and Johnny are dancing and goofing off, crawling toward each other, and hiding behind a screen. All of us girls pair off and start to call "Come 'ere lover boy" and "if he STILL doesn't answer" and I, especially, feel like I have this part of flirting down pat. (Of course, I take out my retainer first because a) it doesn't make me feel sexy and b)... Emily took hers out.)

Someone mentions that they've already seen this movie and want to do Ouija board instead. I am terrified. Not of the spirits (okay a little), but more of peeling my eyes away from this love story. One that I am absolutely under no circumstances allowed to see and one that everyone will be talking about in the cafeteria!

Luckily, Emily announces that we're staying up all night long and if we go to sleep, she'll put shaving cream on our faces, so, "What's the hurry?"

(Thank God.)

It's the end-of-season party and Baby's lame sister does a horrible talent show presentation that makes us all hope we never grow up to be like her. We hate that Baby is stuck with her parents while Johnny is just a beautiful memory for her diary pages.

When, wait! Dressed in black leather from head to toe, Johnny crashes the party and cowboy boots his way over to her table where he announces that "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

We scream.

We scream in unison.

We clap, and squeal, and kick our feet, and scream.

Our knight has ripped us away from the stifling clutches of our parents and knows that we are each beautiful stars that should be shining onstage in a down and dirty version of the mambo! Truly!

The only thing better than seeing ourselves twirl in Baby's beautiful dress and saucily swing our hips around with her as she kicks and points in those fabulous silver shoes is...

the lift.

Baby soars into the air and we are giddy! Arms outstretched, we fly with her! 8 year old girls, accustomed to passing notes in class, writing boys' names on folders, and perfecting our bangs every day into magnificent statuesque towers are now seeing the glory of teenagedom!

Ends up that after Ouija board, we try seances and Emily passes out. I get freaked out by all the conjouring of the dead and the devil stuff, so I call my mom to come pick me up in the middle of the night.

She holds my hand on the way home, which I hate but allow when not in public.

I look out the car window into the 2am night, the moon pouring silver onto hay bales and rolling Kentucky hills. As I’ve Had the Time of my Life repeats over and over in my head, I can’t help but hide a grin… I can't wait to carry a watermelon.