Father's Day

It’s cold today. Later June and still, this chill in the ground, in the roots, still holding onto the memory of winter. All ice and snow in the shoots. There are birds though. I watch them fly back and forth across the yard. Hurrying, forever employed, desperately beating wings in air. My flowers cannot gain purchase on this summer, but the birds choke the clouds with their song. And it is Father’s Day.

Sometimes, in my late-night moments, when the work of the day is done, after I have told my husband all the household news: the updates from therapy with Willa, the thoughts of the doctors from the appointments, the latest news from the CS listserv, when alone in the quiet of falling-to-sleep, I feel like today. There is a chill still in my bones. There is ice and snow and winter maybe in the marrow.

There are birds though, the thoughts of Willa smiling in her high chair, the good news, the small battles won. This tumble of day memories and thoughts are busy, forever employed, as I am as her mother. But unlike today, unlike the shoots that struggle to grow in this cold wet June, I am warmed by the man beside me. All is thaw and sun and future flowers.

I cannot imagine what this year has been like for my husband. What being Willa’s father is like for him. I cannot imagine what he has felt in his quiet falling-to-sleep moments when you are too tired to not be completely honest with yourself. I can barely wrap my mind around my own such things.

But I do know this: without him I would gain no purchase on this life, without him my daughter would not grow, without him all would be winter frost and no birds, no song, no nothing.

So I thank you and can tell you this: that little girl loves you. With everything she has. And she knows something so incredibly important, she knows something that lives in her bones, that fires the fierce warmth inside her tiny self: you are her daddy.

Happy Father’s Day.