parenting

A tendril, a gentle
ringlet placed upon her head;
that was the place I kissed
when I tucked my princess into bed

I cried when she turned four
and ran into the glass, breaking the screen door
She had to get stitches right along her hair line
Being stronger than me, she barely even cried!
And upon the discovery that she had gotten three,
she looked at her father and I, then said, "That's one
for you, you and me!"

When she was eight, she got her first break
the cast on her wrist drove her insane!
She grabbed her pencils, her stencils, and tried
to reach under the gauze to reach the irritated
skin. Being the rebel she was, she ignored our
pleads of, "Now, now, darling; you've got to
leave it."

She didn't like sleeping alone. We took
turns alternating, telling her bedtime stories
and holding her until her limbs became tentacles,
refusing to let go. She'd wake up when we tried to
get out, and though she'd sometimes just pout, roll
over and fall back asleep, the majority
ended up with her running into our room
later, as if her fear of being alone
had sprouted her some wings.

I began noticing how
many nightmares she had
when she turned eleven. Her
smiles were fewer and farther part
in between, and when I braided her hair,
she no longer babbled on, her back slack.
Her spine became the binding of a book, and
when we went to the aquarium, she didn't move
from the tunnel. She put her hand against it,
looking out as if she wished she could
hug the shark. I couldn't sleep that night.

One time, when she was thirteen, she woke me up
in the middle of the night and asked for a
bedtime story. It'd been a while since
she'd asked, and so I rose almost
instantaneously. When I went in,
she laid down and stared at me.
I asked her what she wanted me
to read, and she said, "Anything
without a princess."

Being a father
is not about being
one thing or another.
You don't dream of taking
your boy to baseball practice,
or your girl to ballet. You dream
of them being happy.

You ignore
the bumps between
like the times when you yell or scream
because there were the times when they
were so little, and all they could do
was cry, shit and eat. And even in that,
there was a certain beauty.

Being a parent
is like being a slave
and though the labor is
hard, you enjoy it like a clock maker
who delicately strings together all of the
parts to make one, perfect contraption.

And you know, as a parent,
perfection cannot be reached.
But happiness can, even though it's
set to take a lifetime.

There is no punchline to this story.
Just love them. Never forget that
the experience is sublime.