My baby is a baby no longer.
My baby hasn’t been my baby for a while.
This weekend our firstborn child, Haley, turns 10 years old.
I’ve been arguing with the calendar for months, taking turns with Cindy as we point our fingers to the sky and curse the impossibility. But the months continue to smear our logic with their mocking smiles.
We can argue all we like, but we will never return our faded years. Cindy is cursed with being married to a man who will reflect on moments gone by in excruciating detail, while I am married to a woman who mourns their passing.
Together, we promise to make this birthday wonderfully unforgettable.
Maybe it’s arbitrary, her years moving from one digit to two, but it seems significant to me, and a telltale sign that a wedge of our future that was once so far away is now moving in for good.
When I was younger, the hallmarks of my possible future hung like portraits along the walls in my mind: finishing high school, buying my first business, getting married, having children. Back then, my future was about me, which is where it stayed until I became a man.
I wasn’t a man the day I turned 18, despite what the law insisted. Nor was I a man when I quit high school or bought my first business. I became a man the day I looked at my life’s horizon knowing it would be empty without Cindy beside me.
Then, my future was about us.
My goals were still important, but there was another side to the prism, casting my wants in a clearer light. And that’s where it stayed until I became a father.
Haley changed my life in a second, not the day she was born, but rather eight months earlier when the blue line that didn’t lie reminded me life could be planned but even a perfectly blueprinted house will fall if the sand is soft beneath it.
My future is still about us, all of us. Me and Cindy, Haley and Ethan.
A future that started 10 years ago, 10 years and 9 months if you count the incubation.
Now I’m thinking about their finishing high school, their first businesses, their getting married, and eventually making me a grandfather. Maybe it’s odd for me to be thinking about becoming a grandfather while still knee deep in my mid-30s, but it’s the way my brain works and why I write about time and cycles of death as often as I do.
I cannot help but acknowledge the passing of time, and the week when our daughter turns 10 is the perfect time to take a step back and see it with the awe it deserves.
Yesterday my baby was a tiny peanut. We brought Haley home from the hospital and those first six months flew by. Back then, everyone we met said a different version of the same exact thing: She’s just SO alert!
And she is.
Haley is and always has been an old soul. She is far older than her 10 years, which is one of the things that makes her such an absolute joy to be around, and sometimes difficult to parent. Like her father, Haley has a fierce command of language. And like her mother, a fierce command of her will.
Haley’s first two years were “batteries included.” She was filled with personality – smart, funny, creative, and over flowing with life. Remarkably observant and the only child in the house, she was relatively easy to parent. By the time she was three, Cindy and I were desperately in need of her batteries. She learned the words NO! and turned into the swirling tempest and creative tornado she is today. 
I look at Haley dumbfounded by the breathing proof of all that has happened to our family in the last decade. I had a partnership before her, but Haley turned me and Cindy into a family and laid the bricks for her baby brother to crawl down 2 1/2 years later.
I am beyond lucky to have such an amazing, articulate, wonderful daughter. And I am proud of everything I have given as her father. I have no regrets, and feel fortunate for the time we’ve had together as a family. Yet as she turns 10 I’ve never been more aware of the passing of time.
It was easier a few years ago. Cindy and I had our preschool and a lot of time with our children. But then Haley went to kindergarten and I became a writer, my new profession quickly swallowed hours without chewing as I did everything I could to keep us afloat.
Time is flying and I am flying by time. I must go faster for a little longer so I can afford to slow down. But I must go faster with the full realization that no matter how much my hard work now will help me afford everything I want from life, I cannot afford to lose appreciation for all I have right now.
Haley’s 10th birthday is a beautiful, and perhaps needed, reminder of what I want from this world and for my family, and what I must do to ensure it happens.
The next eight years will fly by as fast as these have, probably faster. I don’t want to lose them like raindrops drying on the ground. My daughter stands at the lip of innocence, still loving the things that children love. I love that she watches Phineas and Ferb, and that she is trying on new behaviors like they were dresses off a rack. I love that our last Christmas passed with her hanging onto her belief in Santa, even if it was only spiderweb thin.
This year we will lose many of those things, and next year even more.
I don’t yet wish to ponder the year after that.
My baby is turning 10, and it won’t be much longer that I’ll be able to cuddle her like I do and tickle her with abandon, and it won’t be much longer before she stops wanting me to.
Now we curl on the couch and I hold her close, and while I know there will always be some version of this perfect comfort between us, it won’t stay the same for too much longer.
While it’s easy to look at this 10 year anniversary of becoming a dad with slight sorrow at a decade gone, I’d rather stare in the eyes of all that is good and acknowledge how lucky I am to have a daughter like Haley, even if I cry as I write this.
As a father, I could never hope for more.
Haley, I love you way past the moon and all the way to the furthest star. You’re my baby girl and you made me a daddy. If possible, you made me love your mommy even more. You are turning into the most beautiful, articulate, creative, compassionate, wonderful person I could ever imagine. We will spend the next 8 years getting to know each other better, and follow it with another lifetime after that.
A very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you. You are everything a father could hope for from a daughter, and a galaxy beyond. Thank you for making me Daddy, and starting off the past 10 years of my life.
I can’t wait for the next 10.
xoxo
My daughter, Haley, is writing a book.
“Do you think she still believes?” I whispered.
You know who your children are.
When we first moved to Ohio from California, we played hide-n-seek a LOT.
I hate baby talk.
The average 3 year old can identify 100 Logos.



