There are spots of time, where, if you remain still, you can peer back and forward for just a brief moment and realize that everything is going to work out just fine. This morning I woke to my 44th year on this planet and while not even coming close to a mild grade mid-life crisis (didn’t happen at 40 either), I felt like something important was waiting for me. Lina, little Sith that she is, jumped me as I lay slumming in bed, having, like every year, ritually taken the day off from work. If I must work for the machine, at least on this one day let there be no emails, no meetings, no inconsequential drama – that effluence of muck that slowly drains the life force of you until one day you find yourself about to take the ferry over to the other side having made no impact in the creation of a more compassionate world.
A week ago, my daughter informed me ’she just can’t call me “Dad” because it just doesn’t sound right, and therefore will continue calling me “Daddy” if that’s OK with me.’ Hmmm, no complaints from me, as I nonchalantly nodded in agreement, though deep inside I sensed that same rush of life energy that many a time has taken me down this path of fatherhood –though always in my mind I’m on the verge of screwing things up – repeatedly letting me know that the path is true, that the bonds will hold, that I may yet be worthy of being her loving father. She gave me a card she crafted, imperfect and impossible to put a price tag on (like the feeling the early Visa ‘priceless’ commercials sometimes gave you, until you realized they were pulling on your heartstrings as they lured you into their usury shackles), sang a unique birthday jingle that made me laugh and ask for continual repeats, and handed me a story.
My daughter handed me a story and as I read it time slowed to a trickle. Since she was a infant I’ve read her stories, endless stories, and at some point around 5 yrs of age I began to make up stories for her at bedtime, off the cuff tales of adventure centered on a family living on the edge of the world, on a beach a continent away, in a land full of magic and dreams. Night after night I would tell her these stories, the main protagonists being a little girl and her daddy, with mama in the background, always patiently waiting for them to return from a search for dragons, talking condors, unspeakably large butterflies, and treasures beyond compare, all inhabiting a moral and virtuous world that came alive with every sentence. Like Scheherazade, I would end the stories with a hint of what the next days adventure would bring, always causing a plead from my daughter, and of course leaving me to mentally manage an array of characters and scenarios so as to not repeat them. I don’t tell these as often now that she devours books at an unbelievable rate – Harry Potter long ago paged through and currently thumbing through the Inheritance Trilogy. But every now and then she’ll ask if I can tell her one, and those are the moments I drop whatever I’m doing and slip back into the magic.
This morning she left me mouth wide open as she delivered her own take on the little girl series, slowed time enough for me to understand that she grows more powerful each day, more independent, more capable of buttressing against the pain the world will attempt to leave at her feet. I’ll always be her daddy, long after I cross the final waters, and that’s enough to calm my restless soul.
