As far back as I can remember, I’ve had dance parties.

They started when I was little. Preschool-age me, dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna without a care in the world. Then came slumber parties, when dancing became a group activity—friends, questionable choreography, and absolutely no self-consciousness about any of it.

By high school, my friend Liz and I could spend entire weekends dancing away in her room. We didn’t need somewhere to go or anything particularly exciting to be happening. Give us music, a bedroom, and a weekend, and we could entertain ourselves for hours.

In college, my roommate Greta and I perfected a slightly different version of the daytime dance party. There were afternoons when all of our other suitemates were in class and we would take shots in the middle of the day, turn on the music, and just dance, dance, dance.

Because apparently higher education comes in many forms.

The dance parties followed me into adulthood.

I remember one night in my 30s when I was doing a step challenge with a friend. I had gone to a ’90s dance party at the 930 Club, came home, and somehow just…kept going. By myself. Until around 5 a.m.

The next day my friend checked my Fitbit stats and immediately wanted to know:

What were you doing?!

Dancing. Obviously.

Then Bailey came along and became my somewhat involuntary dance partner. After a few drinks, I would scoop her up and make her dance with me. During COVID, when the world got very small and very strange, our dance parties continued. Bailey may not have always volunteered for the position, but she was there for them nonetheless.

And now, I have a new dance partner.

Baby J.

The difference is that she is actually a willing participant.

Almost every day, we turn on music and dance. I hold her, bounce around the room, sing completely off-key, and generally make a fool of myself. And she lights up.

She smiles. She laughs. She looks at me like my terrible singing is perfectly acceptable and my dance moves are something to be admired rather than questioned.

There is something unexpectedly full-circle about it.

The little girl who danced around to Michael Jackson and Madonna now has a little girl of her own in her arms. The music has changed. The dance partners have changed. I definitely can’t stay up dancing until 5 a.m. anymore.

But the dance party continues.

Someday Baby J will probably decide that dancing around the house with her mother is deeply embarrassing. She’ll develop her own music, her own friends, her own dance parties that I won’t be invited to.

But I hope there will always be room for ours.

I hope when she’s five, we dance in the kitchen. When she’s ten, we turn the music up in the car. When she’s sixteen, I hope I can occasionally convince her to humor me. And when she’s grown, I hope there are moments when a song comes on and, without thinking about it, we both start dancing.

Because some of the happiest moments of my life haven’t been the big ones.

Sometimes happiness is just a good song, a little bit of space, someone you love, and absolutely no reason not to dance.