I know it makes no sense, me making a wine reference. What does a teetotaler know from wine anyway? Maybe the glut of wine and bourbon tasting dinners I’ve been to recently is a blame, anywho, not important, because it does totally make sense here as I describe this dad’s love for his daughters. So I’m going with it, with a glass of water in my hand.
If I was following along with the instructions, I’d proclaim to you and to all that the love I felt for my daughters, deep in my rapidly beating heart, while gazing into their dollhouse baby eyes was the deepest, most concentrated I’d ever experienced and, conversely, that parenting them now, all growing-up sass and grown-up smell, is a daily grind that’s wearing me down to the bone. However, if I were to proclaim either of those things, to you or to anyone, I’d be a liar-liar-pants-on-fire with an annoying penchant for grabbing at the lowest hanging parent blogger fruit.
[insert trope-y meme here]
The love I had for my daughters in their infancy was genuine, no doubt, and the bond was instant and ironclad, but it was based mostly in the overwhelming wonder of their existence. I didn’t know them know them, I mean, there wasn’t anything about them to know, not really, there were just there, in our lives all of a sudden, and yes indeed that was a marvelous and lovely thing; queue harpsichord and angelic choir. Each and every time I’d look upon my daughters as infants it was with at least a dash of ‘I cannot [expletive] believe that you are here, that your mom and I made you’, and with halo of impossible cuteness covering the expanse from sad lips to silent naps to those early upward curvatures of the mouth.
To love intensely though and with the complexity of a fine wine (there I go again), for this dad at least, there needs to be quite a bit more behind soft tiny eyes. There’s got to be the presence of a developed/developing personality, a sense of humor, a wit, an intelligence, a sharpness, and some semblance of ability and willingness for those same wide, blissful eyes to reciprocate love, to mirror uncompromising devotion.
One night last week, while my two daughters were putting together a gift for their grandmother’s birthday, each of them, for their own reason, had a hard time staying on task. Mouse would be up, all legs and floppy short hair, zipping around the corner into the other room but still within my sight, bounding up and over the sofa with the aid of her new trampoline. Giggles and sweat, bounces and bumps. Bear, meanwhile, continually appeared by my side as I sunk into my leather arm chair, feet extended onto the ottoman, peering at my phone as I scrolled through eBay looking at toys for her and her sis. She curled up on my lap and hit my neck with staccato kisses, as she rattled off all the different Pop! Vinyl figures she’s dreaming of adding to her burgeoning collection — B.A. from the A-Team, Go-Go from Big Hero 6, Scarlet Witch from The Avengers (I think), the Niffler from Fantastic Beasts, and so many more. It’s dizzying, really, her wish list. She, her sister, and their mum are Funko Pop obsessed.
For no real reason, as is her random way, she had on a pair of thick black frame glasses devoid of lenses, and between those and her hair and her smile and her sarcastic humor that follows a straight line from my warped head, and as her equally charming and loving sister sprang up, down and over furniture some 20 feet away from us, I felt a tidal wave of love unlike anything I can remember experiencing or ever could have experienced when they were miniature crawling-around people with basic needs easily fulfilled with a spoon full of something and a dry Pamper.
I love my children more now than I ever have and I anticipate that’ll be true again come tomorrow, and the next day, and so on and on. The love I have for my kids is a full bodied one, encompassing a spectrum of memories, present day moments, and a foreshadowing of what’s to come. I adore the children they were, love the young people they are right now, and I’m in awe of the many possibilities of the adults they each will go on to become. Additionally, my respect and admiration for the way my daughters think about the world, the ways in which they believe the world could be improved, and the desire they both have to bring those ideas to fruition is only growing.
This dad’s love for his daughters is getting finer, deeper and more priceless by the day. They are two of the finest people I’ve ever met and it continues to be a honor and a privilege to be their father.
