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Momma and I were in the old kitchen when she blared the song, “Dancing,” from the Hello, Dolly! soundtrack. Carol Channing’s voice pounded out of the boom box next to our oven. Momma held my waist and swept me across the kitchen floor as she loudly chimed in on the chorus: “And one, two, three, one, two, three—look! I’m dancing!” In that moment, Momma was Dolly, and I felt like Cornelius—“My heart is about to burst, my head is about to pop, and now that I’m dancing, who cares if I ever stop!”—and I wanted to stay safe in that song forever with her, our bare feet sliding in and out of rhythm on our cold kitchen floor.
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