For Dads

It's been 36 years since you wrapped your arms around me, lifted me skyward, balanced me in the center of your broad chest, the buttons of a crisp, white cotton shirt pressing into my belly, getting stuck on the waistband of my shorts, carving a memory in my flesh.

There is something, isn't there, when a daddy lifts his baby girl above his own head and she looks down at him on high--to see the part of his hair, his eyebrows from the top, the way his nose forms a ball at the tip.

Little girls can't tell these things about their daddies when their party shoes are on the floor. But from a head above him, I can see everything. The roundness of his cheeks, their slight blush, the few hairs that wander from the rest.

Fathers, lift your daughters today. Spin them round if you can.

They will remember.