I am remembering another video clip that I love. Emma is a little bit older, maybe three. Peter’s parents are visiting. We seem to have just finished dinner. As was our custom in the evenings, we have put on some music, something that Emma chose, and she is getting ready to dance along. She grabs my hands and we start to spin in a circle. Peter is filming and his parents have settled on the couch, content to be spectators. But Emma is not happy with this arrangement. She grabs her grandparents by the hands, first Grandma, then Farfar, and draws them into her circle. She instructs us to hold hands and then she urges us to start circling as fast as we can. And in that moment, as we all held hands and raced around the circle, we abandoned our adult self-consciousness and got to experience the joy of being 3 again: the joy of holding hands, the joy of being spontaneous, the joy of spinning in circles until you’re so dizzy that you collapse in a happy, laughing heap.
This was a gift that Emma had throughout her life. She knew how to twirl through life without being self-conscious about who was watching; and she knew how to grab people by the hands and draw them into her dance.
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