“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.”