The Gift of Dance

When I was good and pregnant with Jay - maybe six or seven months along - Babe and I would get in bed to watch television and catch a glimpse of our unborn baby in action. It was always around 11 p.m. when I could lay on my back and Jay would start moving. She would move so much that it looked like she was just kicking here and there then she'd make a ripple across my belly. It was kind of creepy, but pretty cool at the same time.

Back then I said our baby was playing soccer. We didn't know our baby's gender before we met her in February, and we definitely didn't know her personality - but she got very lively when we listened to music and during her 11 p.m. show. Maybe she has been dancing since she was in the womb? What I dubbed Jay playing soccer was actually my baby girl practicing what would later become plies, jumps, and fluid poses at the barre.

I've said it time and time again: I danced around her nursery to the then-latest Jennifer Lopez CD when I was pregnant with her and prayed the baby growing inside me would dance. Today, we took her to Cleo Parker Robinson's dance studio for a ballet class and I was reminded of the days I carried her inside of me. I was reminded that the beautiful ballerina on the other side of the glass door separating us was blessed with the gift of dance. It is a gift I pray she makes full use of because it is when she dances that Jay is most alive.

If I can feel the joy in her every move, whether she's doing ballet or choreographing a dance to the newest Beyonce song, I wonder what the piece of heaven is like that Jay is transported to when she is utilizing the beautiful gift God gave her: the Gift of Dance.