09 January 2006

Aging through our children

Yesterday marked another birthday for our beloved daughter. She's had some rough times recently, and it's hard to watch someone I care for so deeply have to deal with adversity. I worry about her. About all I can do as the Dad in this relationship is to be there for her.

She has given me more unadulterated joy than I can express. It seems like yesterday I was sleeping in a chair in a hospital room, the day of her birth. She came into the world on a bitingly cold day, during a winter that was the coldest in a century. After her arrival, we had snow which lingered for weeks. Her mother was pretty much housebound, with a new child and her own mother to help with the baby.

It's funny how you maintain images in your mind from (almost) a quarter of a century ago. We needed groceries, and the only way to get them was to walk to a grocery store. So that was what I did, bundling myself against the bitter cold wind and walking over snow drifts. When I got to the grocery store, I was so hot that I had to take my coat off and toss it in the cart. Armed with a grocery list, I moved around the store like everyone else there -- we were pretty much in shock from the cold and snow.

Then came the effort of taking the bags of food back home, walking through the same damn snow. It wasn't easy, but it was my duty as provider to my new clan. I'm still not clear how I stayed upright. The snow had been plowed (sort of) on the major roadway I had to cross, which meant to cross the road involved climbing a two-foot bank of ice.

All of these images come flooding back when I think of how this precious bundle came into our lives. My wish for all of the new parents out there is that you have children as wonderful as ours. If you only have one daughter (as we do), may she be the beacon of light in your life that ours is to us.

Happy birthday, sweetie. Having written this, I don't feel so old.

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