An Ode to My Daughter

March 20, 2009 By 36 Comments

My daughter was born with winter in swing,
all done with fall and midway to spring.

Two chocolate drop eyes and a cherubic nose
just above blushing cheeks that were lit like a rose.

She rewrote our life with an edit of wonder,
took all our targets and tore them asunder.

No matter how much you know, or how much you care,
no mother or father can ever prepare

For the razor thin line that’s drawn after birth
between sacrifices needed and what they are worth.

For two and a half years, she shared with no other,
just Mommy and Daddy; no sign of a brother.

We soaked 29 months like light from the sun,
with learning and laughter and fistfuls of fun.

Then her brother was born and to our surprise,
the two of them met when she stared in his eyes.

“I love you, Max Michael,” our little girl said.
She first kissed his cheek and then patted his head.

The four of us frolicked through several new stages,
chewing our challenges and varying changes.

We opened our school and told her we’d need her
to set an example and be a good leader.

She stepped right up and shined like a star,
beaming a broadcast about how lucky we are.

Like lightning our years quickly fell from the sky.
First preschool then kinder, both flew right on by.

Now she’s in 1st grade, our sweet little lass -
caring, creative, and top of her class.

I love her smile, her humor and mind.
I love that she’s tender. I love that she’s kind.

My little Mia, like an apple and tree,
is a little bit Mommy and a little bit me.

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Mia on the Mic

March 19, 2009 By 47 Comments

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Hi! I’m Mia

March 18, 2009 By 44 Comments

Today is the first ever guest post from my daughter. She was really really excited to do this. Enjoy!

img_0075My name is Mia Maria. Well, not really. That’s just the name my daddy gave to me when he’s writing about me on Writer Dad. I am seven years old and my birthday is in January. I love drawing, cuddling with my mom and dad, and watching movies. I do not watch television.

I go to a dual immersion school and I get to speak Spanish all day long! My teacher is a lady and only speaks Spanish to us but she speaks English when she is speaking to other grown ups. My favorite things to do in school are read, write, and play. I am in this program called Ballet Folklorico. We are learning two dances right now called, “La Michuhacan” and “La Azteca.” I wear a purple skirt and a kind of shirt called a chino poblana. I also wear a pair of black shoes.

I love to draw because it makes me feel happy and makes me smile. My favorite things to draw are bunny rabbits! My favorite things to eat are Chinese food, Mexican food and all kinds of seafood. I think seaweed is really yummy. My favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. My favorite kinds of ice cream are rainbow sherbet and spumoni. I like to cuddle with my mommy and daddy because it makes me feel beaming. I think that’s how you say it.

My brother’s name is Max, but only like my name is Mia. He is the rascaliest brother I have ever met. He always wants to kiss me and is always antagonizing me. We always get along and cuddle on movie night. Movie night is every Friday. We get to watch a movie and have movie treats. My favorite movies are American Girl doll movies, Tinkerbell, and movies about baby animals like the arctic one with the polar bears and snow foxes. (WD NOTE: She means Arctic Tale)

I love being seven. Bye-bye and adios.

Mia

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Meet Mia, My Little Girl

March 16, 2009 By 40 Comments

“Certain is that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.”

~ Joseph Addison

miaIntroducing you to my son was one of the highlights of this site’s young life. Not only was the series tremendous fun, it allowed my boy to gain a bit of direct insight into what I do and how I interact with the world when I’m not engaged in garbage trucks, super heroes, or monster hide and seek.

Max had a grand time and has since asked (no less that 47,238 times) when we might do it again. Soon buddy, soon. The two of us together read every comment and email, and thank you for your kindness and compliments from the bottom of our hearts. 

This week it is my daughters turn.

Mia is magic. She must be, how else could she possibly transform both my identity and destiny just scant seconds after arriving in the world? She is just bright enough to make me believe that children can do just about anything, and needs just enough guidance to make me certain no child can ever do their best without the steady beat of belief behind them. 

Mia is our first born; a veritable bulls-eye for every over indulgence we were ever foolish enough to lend our surrender. Though there were roughly 10 billion babies born before Mia, she is the one who taught us how to parent, showed us the rippled image of our deep reflection, and led Daisy and I toward our truest voice.

About three weeks back, Mia lost her two front teeth. This has not only temporarily shifted the character of her face, and made her so heart achingly, beautifully awkward, the void is also an unceasing reminder that the final page of our daughter’s first act as a child has been forever turned.

There is an artist living in the deepest bed of Mia’s inner well. She can whittle hours as she rinses white space with color – crayon, pastel, pencil, paint – she loves them all and wields each with equal abandon. Her love for rich language and vivid color are woven from the same fabric that hangs from her father like well washed cotton.

Mia has taught, and continues to teach me, to constantly reach for my best. There is nothing she won’t try. If Mia can jump onstage and sing kareoke to songs she’s never heard, even though they are familiar to all those around her and she is a few hairs past scared (something that happened at a Hanna Montana birthday party this weekend), then I can push against the wind every bit as hard.

It is our job to set the example for her each and every day, her actions then setting first precedent for Max. It doesn’t matter we come from, only the future we build each day. Mia’s constant glee for life easily pulls us deep inside her moments.

This week will follow a similar template set by Max the previous week. Questions left for Mia today will be answered later.

I’m proud to share my Mia with you. I hope you enjoy her gifts.

Writer Dad

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Happy Birthday Mia

January 14, 2009 By 27 Comments

“There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.”

~John Gregory Brown

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mijita/2148395338/Seven years ago I suddenly became someone different. It happened overnight, from one instant to the next; my identity altered until I found myself scratching the skin of someone new.

Nine months was plenty of time to assemble my courage and thicken my resolve, but there was no aggregate of minutes that could ever hope to truly prepare me for what waited on the other side of that first quiet cry, bouncing from the tiles of the birthing room.

Becoming a father transformed me. Every incident before or since can only stand in shadow.

My natural playfulness and undiluted love for life made me a natural for the role, but I had no idea how much fatherhood would change me until I had the fierce instinct to protect, clotting my blood alongside an adamant need to nurture.

Mia made me a father. She is a remarkable child, and I stand in constant awe of who she is and who she is gradually becoming.  To celebrate Mia’s 7th birthday, I would like to mention just a few of the many things I love about her.

  • Minute for Minute lived on this Earth, Mia is the most articulate person I know. Her questions often arrive under my radar, and she answers inquiries I never even knew I had.
  • Mia is a constant storm of creativity. Around our casa, we call her a tornado… this is not necessarily a compliment.  She scatters her projects across our life with chaos organized only in her mind.  We are on her about this poor habit like white on rice, but between all of you and me, I find her hurricane of work somewhat of a wonder.
  • Mia is beautiful.  I understand beauty is found less in the face then it is in the heart, but Mia looks enough like her mother to remind me of the fact every time I am bold enough to get lost in her eyes, and enough like me to cripple me with the thought that I could take part in the creation of something so stunning.
  • Mia is a generous soul.  She is unbelievable happy and spreads her cheer to others with the chirpiness of a songbird.
  • Mia is determined.  If there is a problem, she will find a way to solve it, and if the solution lies just out of her reach, then Mia will find a way to climb.

I love Mia’s confidence. Last week, when Cindy and I were teaching our writer’s workshop at Mia’s school, we asked our students to list three adjectives that described them. Mia was part of the workshop, but not called upon to answer. Later, at home, Cindy and I looked at her list: smart, beautiful, and loving, she said.

You’re absolutely right, Mia.  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Happy Birthday, Bunny.  I love you.

Writer Dad

Daisy wishes Mia a happy birthday as well. Butterflies are Free.

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Write on Mia!

November 19, 2008 By 70 Comments

Note: This is another one of those posts where I unabashedly fawn over my daughter. I’ll try not to be too sloppy.

“To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”

~Josh Billings

Last week was our parent-teacher conference for Mia.  As some of you know, Daisy and I send our daughter to a dual immersion program where eighty percent of her day is in Spanish.  She’s in first grade now.  Last year, that number was ninety.

Daisy and I were keen to hear what her teacher had to say.  We felt we had a clear idea, for better or worse, but were looking forward to a dot at the end of our sentence.

Our daughter, it turns out, is quite the the little wordsmith.  Her magnificent maestra is pleased when students can line up three well articulated sentences.  Mia is penning five paragraph papers… in a second tongue.  She has a mature grasp of punctuation, and an apparent fondness for the quotation mark.

Mia isn’t a genius, but she is willing to work hard, and push through most any barrier impeding her comprehension.  She’s been drawing, or writing since she could hold a pencil. She is rarely afraid to try, and therefore most often succeeds.  For Daisy and I, this is a calliope of validating inspiration.

We’ve known Mia for seven and a half years, if we travel back to when she was no larger than a grain of rice, which I think is perfectly fair.  Even then, she was dangling the strings and making us dance.

We were thrilled to have a discussion with an outstanding practitioner who spends the better part of seven hours with our daughter, each and every weekday.  At school, Mia is undaunted.   She’s fearless, and flies without worry, unafraid to fail, but anxious to produce.

At home, Mia sometimes moves with the mayhem of a tornado, juggling several ventures at once.  She twirls from table to table, coloring Christmas ornaments, writing a letter to Santa, all while playing the architect to one of her famous “contraptions.”

It is easy to picture her in the classroom, and we acknowledge our fortune that Mia has a teacher who understands her student and wishes to articulate her productive, capable mind, yet also knows that her enthusiasm must be channeled.  Our maestra will help teach Mia to be organized without squelching her spirit.

Mia’s a wonderful writer because she has an example to follow, and for this I am certainly proud, but there is a caveat.

I sometimes juggle topics like a sideshow attraction, and Mia’s a good enough listener to know that I frequently work on many different things at once.  I must not only crow about the kudos, I must also look upon the side of the coin that is kissing the ground.

Our children are reflections in a puddle; rippling with an image not quite ours, but no doubt our distant double.  To truly know who they are, we must have a clear understanding of who we are.  Only then can we walk them toward their best.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter for hire, specializing in SEO web copy and custom blog posts.

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Seven Year Ouch

November 3, 2008 By 82 Comments

“It kills you to see them grow up.  But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.”

~Barbara Kingsolver

“Mia, You need to stop that!  You are almost seven years old.”

The moment the words left my lips, I felt them at the tips of my toes, crackling through my body the entire trip down.  The room felt colder and the walls looked a little darker; as though the sun had ducked behind a cloud, or perhaps my eyes were just a bit more tired.

Mia isn’t seven, and won’t be for another couple of months.  She is, however, at the perfect age where Daisy and I can effectively use the pending candle as a talking point; the perfect age to expect the behavior required of a seven year old without having to relinquish all the benefits.

What wilted something inside me in that moment, as the words seven years old fell from my tongue for the first time, was that the seven at that second may as well have had a teen attached to its tail.

Daisy and I brought Mia home from the hospital yesterday, and were married just the day before.  Max, it seems, has only been with us for hours.

The last seven years have not fallen like leaves in Autumn, drifting gently toward a crumbling sidewalk.  They have been captured by the truculent wind of a rapidly changing season, sweeping our rituals and twisting them into memories.

I adore all the ideas our tomorrow might bring, but will gladly wait for the blossoms to bloom.

Daisy took a picture of Mia later in the day.  The perfect shot, you know the one.  When our child is caught unaware, and all their soul is on display.  Sometimes we see things different through the second hand eyes of a photograph.  In this particular stolen moment, Mia is drawing.  She still looks little enough to be my baby, but big enough to make me wince.  Her face was a little thinner, her hair a little longer (falling across her cheeks like a shadows), and her expression a bit more knowing.

She still cannot wait to crawl into my lap, and thinks most everything I say is funny.  She believes I am the most handsome of all men, and knows beyond doubt that I love her without question.  Her innocence is almost entirely intact, and her intelligent curiosity is bursting at the seams.

I know that no day is longer than another, and that time marches in only one direction, but knowing my moments are fleeting is enough to keep me mindful.

I’m surprised to find my eyes moist as I finish this thought; crying is a rarity while I write.  I do not feel sad.  Just tender, and perhaps a bit raw.  I feel the sands of the hourglass trying to bury me, as I burn my minutes in an endeavor to make them one day abundant.

My eyes are moist, but I am not crying.

The tears are there, but not a single one has fallen.  I do not think they will.  At least not right now.

I am sure they will spill when I read these words out loud to Daisy this evening.  That is when they will feel the most real.

Writer Dad

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Namas Daisy says “No Rain, No Rainbows.”

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