White

It has been snowing for two days without pause, and the city has come to resemble the one buried in my childhood memory. The rooftops are blanketed just as they were years ago, when I would greet nearly every falling snowflake with applause — the only difference being that I am no longer that small boy, clutching a sled with both hands and racing toward the steepest hill, so I could come flying down it with flushed cheeks.

Now I stand at the window, watching the city dressed in white, holding myself back from going out — because in my arms I hold my little girl, white as this snow, who has let her head fall gently back and lies sleeping in the hands of a father whose own childhood is out there still, racing through these narrow streets on a sled.

What dull creatures we grown-ups are. And perhaps that is why I have let the everyday carry away, until now, the words I have so many times meant to say to you — my father's little white snowball of a girl.

Time is carried away by daily routine, and I could not write you even a word, my little lady. And yet, since your birth, three whole months have passed in which every night I have shared with you in my heart how immense you are to me — this tiny, precious little thing. That is how it is in this world: a father and his girl, chasing the hours every day trying to keep up — and time only stops when it sees your small face, your wide bright eyes, your little lips rounded and ready to coo. You spend most of your hours sleeping still, but from the very first day you arrived, a small mistress laid her hand upon this house. Everything began to orbit around you, around your rhythm. I have caught myself many times being so much more careful in how I want to touch you — so gently (your brother I would toss and tumble without a second thought). We love you — your mother and I, and your brother. As for him — I wonder if you felt it yesterday, how tenderly and carefully he tried to wrap you in his big brother arms.

I come to you from fathering a boy, your brother — but you entered my life with your particular, feminine wildness. Every morning your babbling carries a different scent. Your mischievous glance holds a different spark, one that travels from beneath that thin curtain of hair falling over your eyes all the way to my heart. The touch of your small fingers on my face is a true morning grace. Your bright pealing laughter and the way you throw your head back with every giggle — it promises me plenty of worry when the age of mischief arrives. But right now, I am savoring every moment of it completely.

I love you, and I bow before you, my little lady, in the face of your existence.

Exactly one year ago, I felt it once more — that life is worth living for days like this. Exactly one year ago, on this very day, the feelings tangled together again: pride, happiness, responsibility, and fear — all at once, all at the same time. A familiar story, it seemed, but arriving now with softer fingers, with eyes of a stranger color, and with a new puzzle — the one called being a father to a daughter.

I had thought your brother taught me everything I needed to know. But every new day, when I look at you, I understand that all the knowledge I gathered must be gathered again from the beginning — and stitched together with the emotions you give to me, to your mother, to your brother. For nine months I was told that fathering a daughter is something else entirely. Until I saw you, those words drifted past me like ordinary words. Now I understand precisely that a phrase this true is one many people may never fully grasp in a lifetime.

I love you, my girl. Congratulations, and my wish for you is this: may you have reasons to smile in this life, and may you have the desire to shriek with happy babbling — for as long as I never tire of watching it.

There cannot exist in this world the notion of a child without the knowledge that one day — without warning — they will ask to be carried for the last time. They will slip their small hand into your large fist for the last time. They will stand before you with arms outstretched, making you feel like a god — and from their vantage point you will see a small human being, one who holds you as their whole hope. It is an injustice not to know when this moment will arrive for the last time in your life. When they will wrap their arms tightly around your neck for the last time, and you will feel their laughter against your throat — laughter that will never repeat in quite that way again.

And after some time and some distance has passed, you will set them down, take their hand again, and walk on — proud that your child has grown, that they walk beside you on their own feet — without ever realizing. Without ever knowing that this was the last journey they made in your arms. That you will never again see that small person standing with arms outstretched, the way you had grown used to. That your time of being their god has passed.

It is an injustice to let the feeling of their laughter against your neck go so peacefully — not knowing it is over. That your small person will never again find it necessary to crawl up into your arms, to count your smiles with small fingers on your face, somewhere at the corner of your lips and eyes, between the tears and the wrinkles.

If nothing else, we should at least know when this day arrives. Perhaps then we would spend the whole day with them pressed against our hearts, walking home from the farthest point in the world in very slow steps — gathering into our necks their breathed-out smiles, so that from tomorrow until our last day, the scent of our diapered, arms-outstretched children on those dawning nights would give us strength. On the nights when they do not come home until late, and we sit wedged between waiting for a message on the phone and the memories of their childhood — sitting between walls that have been painted over, cleaned up, gone quiet — without the children who once stood before us with arms outstretched.

It is an injustice if somewhere, someone knows about this day — and stays silent.