May 2015
Yet another year has passed in a blur of waste and want, resplendent in good intentions, and captive to the grievous mistakes and wonderous successes achieved in its wake, and I marvel that i am still present to witness times gentle touch get inexorably firmer as its slow breaths draw closer to my cheeks. Birthdays seem a childs delight, yet it was with barely veiled excitement that i awoke this morning, cataloguing the days tasks mentally as I devised preemptive counter measures for the growing list of demands that seemed intent on marauding the simple joy of celebrating my own existence with the people that found themselves, some to their discomfiture, in my life.
It was early this morning when the first notes of the birthday song, the song that every child knows, and every adult can sing effortlessly, erupted in my direction, and i wanted to hold time in my hand, and forbid its passing as my daughter Taylor sang to me, her soft, lilting voice taking care with each word, as if she bled her heart onto each syllable before it passed her lips, and they fell before me in a shower of soft sighs and silky, red regard. I listened, silent, as I heard her say the words, and they weresuddenly a foreign language to me, a magical language lost to common ears, that echoed with beauty unimaginable, and i stood, transfixed and defenseless against the innocent sincerity she placed on each word, as if she bent over them as they lay down to sleep, kissing each on the forehead, smiling as she went to the next.
“Happy Birthday to Daddy…….”
Since she had arrived in my life, i had taken this name, and with it, the promise to try, in the most assuredly imperfect way, to cultivate her brilliant, questing mind, and to attempt to be the example by which she would measure a man. It was an honor, that name, coming from the lips of an angel, whispering the love of God in a childs song, and i could barely hold the tears as they threatened to seek refuge at her feet, and revere her name in dripping splashes along the ground. Twice today, she sang that hymn to me, and twice i fell in love with her as her sweet little voice lifted in the refrain. “Happy Birthday to Daddy….”. She was, I thought, my sweet, beautiful little girl. As she sang, the sun peered down upon the earth, its baleful eye softening with the rising beauty of her song, and the trees swayed with the words of her adoring communion.
It was early this morning when the first notes of the birthday song, the song that every child knows, and every adult can sing effortlessly, erupted in my direction, and i wanted to hold time in my hand, and forbid its passing as my daughter Taylor sang to me, her soft, lilting voice taking care with each word, as if she bled her heart onto each syllable before it passed her lips, and they fell before me in a shower of soft sighs and silky, red regard. I listened, silent, as I heard her say the words, and they weresuddenly a foreign language to me, a magical language lost to common ears, that echoed with beauty unimaginable, and i stood, transfixed and defenseless against the innocent sincerity she placed on each word, as if she bent over them as they lay down to sleep, kissing each on the forehead, smiling as she went to the next.
“Happy Birthday to Daddy…….”
Since she had arrived in my life, i had taken this name, and with it, the promise to try, in the most assuredly imperfect way, to cultivate her brilliant, questing mind, and to attempt to be the example by which she would measure a man. It was an honor, that name, coming from the lips of an angel, whispering the love of God in a childs song, and i could barely hold the tears as they threatened to seek refuge at her feet, and revere her name in dripping splashes along the ground. Twice today, she sang that hymn to me, and twice i fell in love with her as her sweet little voice lifted in the refrain. “Happy Birthday to Daddy….”. She was, I thought, my sweet, beautiful little girl. As she sang, the sun peered down upon the earth, its baleful eye softening with the rising beauty of her song, and the trees swayed with the words of her adoring communion.
