Big Girl
It sure doesn't seem like it's been eight years, but sure enough - my little girl turns eight years old today. I've made a habit over the years of retelling her birth story on this day, but I'm breaking it this year.
My memory of it is still brilliantly vivid: the drive through town at 2 in the morning, the frigid air and the dry, empty streets. I don't think I've ever seen so little traffic in Pittsburgh in my life.
Instead of looking back though, I want to look forward, as I hope she is.
Eight years old. 'She's half-way to 16,' I told Gail last night. It amazes me... no, I should say SHE amazes me. She's not a baby anymore. And she'll only be a little girl for a short while longer. The first glimmers of the young woman she'll be are there already. I'm proud of her, certainly. That's no surprise at all, but what is surprising to me is how much I respect and admire her.
That's not something they tell you about so much when people talk to you about being a parent.
She loves to dance. I've always known that. I love to watch her dance. But when I went to 'Parent Observation Day' at her new dance school, I saw something new: determination.
Dance isn't just something fun to do anymore. Dancing is important to her and she's not just -doing- it anymore, she's pursuing it. In a class packed with scattered, distracted, crazy 6- and 7-year-olds, she was focused and attentive. She concentrated on everything her teachers said and did, and reproduced them with remarkable accuracy. Now, I've always thought she was good. That's pride. But to see her working so hard to build herself and her skills - I found myself admiring her dedication.
And that's just one thing. She's a smart little girl. She has her own opinions, draws her own conclusions, and adjusts both when she receives new information. She talks to us, and she listens. One thing that's stuck with me from our conference with her teacher this past Fall was that Marenna answers questions thoroughly. She doesn't just regurgitate the bare minimum, she expands upon it and gives context for her responses.
But that's all present, and I promised to talk about the future.
She was born in 2002, just two years into the 21st century. It seems fairly likely to me, that (assuming the world survives so long) she could very well see the first days of the 22nd. What that world might look like, I can't even hope to imagine. All I have to do is look back over my relatively short life (38 years isn't THAT long...) to see that it's purest folly to try and foretell the wonders she will see. I can still remember going to Shane King's house (Hey, Shane! Nice to see you comin' round!) and playing Pong. I remember learning BASIC on the school's bank of TRS-80s, all getting their instructions from a cassette tape drive on Mr. Feisel's desk. And now here I am typing on a machine more powerful than a room full of those things and thinking that it's getting a little long in the tooth.
That's just the tip of the ice berg. I'm confident that she will see a woman elected president. I hope only that it's a woman she can be proud of. What will her world look like? How will she look back on mine? How will we navigate the seas of puberty, high school, college... Will she have children? Will she write, as I hope so deeply she will?
I don't know. I don't have any answers. All I do is look at the girl I have now and hope. I do my best to give her the tools to choose wisely, to recover from her mistakes, and to see the storms that will inevitably come and weather them well.
Happy Birthday, Marenna. Thank you for being my girl.
Daddy loves you.
My memory of it is still brilliantly vivid: the drive through town at 2 in the morning, the frigid air and the dry, empty streets. I don't think I've ever seen so little traffic in Pittsburgh in my life.
Instead of looking back though, I want to look forward, as I hope she is.
Eight years old. 'She's half-way to 16,' I told Gail last night. It amazes me... no, I should say SHE amazes me. She's not a baby anymore. And she'll only be a little girl for a short while longer. The first glimmers of the young woman she'll be are there already. I'm proud of her, certainly. That's no surprise at all, but what is surprising to me is how much I respect and admire her.
That's not something they tell you about so much when people talk to you about being a parent.
She loves to dance. I've always known that. I love to watch her dance. But when I went to 'Parent Observation Day' at her new dance school, I saw something new: determination.
Dance isn't just something fun to do anymore. Dancing is important to her and she's not just -doing- it anymore, she's pursuing it. In a class packed with scattered, distracted, crazy 6- and 7-year-olds, she was focused and attentive. She concentrated on everything her teachers said and did, and reproduced them with remarkable accuracy. Now, I've always thought she was good. That's pride. But to see her working so hard to build herself and her skills - I found myself admiring her dedication.
And that's just one thing. She's a smart little girl. She has her own opinions, draws her own conclusions, and adjusts both when she receives new information. She talks to us, and she listens. One thing that's stuck with me from our conference with her teacher this past Fall was that Marenna answers questions thoroughly. She doesn't just regurgitate the bare minimum, she expands upon it and gives context for her responses.
But that's all present, and I promised to talk about the future.
She was born in 2002, just two years into the 21st century. It seems fairly likely to me, that (assuming the world survives so long) she could very well see the first days of the 22nd. What that world might look like, I can't even hope to imagine. All I have to do is look back over my relatively short life (38 years isn't THAT long...) to see that it's purest folly to try and foretell the wonders she will see. I can still remember going to Shane King's house (Hey, Shane! Nice to see you comin' round!) and playing Pong. I remember learning BASIC on the school's bank of TRS-80s, all getting their instructions from a cassette tape drive on Mr. Feisel's desk. And now here I am typing on a machine more powerful than a room full of those things and thinking that it's getting a little long in the tooth.
That's just the tip of the ice berg. I'm confident that she will see a woman elected president. I hope only that it's a woman she can be proud of. What will her world look like? How will she look back on mine? How will we navigate the seas of puberty, high school, college... Will she have children? Will she write, as I hope so deeply she will?
I don't know. I don't have any answers. All I do is look at the girl I have now and hope. I do my best to give her the tools to choose wisely, to recover from her mistakes, and to see the storms that will inevitably come and weather them well.
Happy Birthday, Marenna. Thank you for being my girl.
Daddy loves you.