This column is a reprint from December, 2010.
My eldest daughter called me at ten o’clock one night, and said: “What engagement? To whom?” She was reading a column I’d written, and came across a fact she had not known. I answered the question, and went back to sleep, smiling. I love my two daughters, and an interrupted sleep does nothing to diminish that feeling.
Lisa, my eldest, was born at a time when ultrasound technology was not as sophisticated as it is now. I have no pictures of her in utero, as I do of her sister, Lauren. Her advent was uncertain, as her mother had medical issues that the doctors said gave the bug-that-would-become-Lisa a 20 percent chance of hanging on until birth. I wanted a girl, and I knew that the bug would be a girl.
Bride One and I had been married for two years when we decided that we ought to get busy on a baby-making project. Once we were pregnant, I told everyone that we were going to have a girl. I was cautioned to prepare for disappointment, since the process by which the sex of a fetus was determined, at that time, was deemed too dangerous for a difficult pregnancy. Still: I made a girl. My friends told me I was lucky to have guessed right, but I never had any doubt, and was quietly delighted to have helped to welcome Lisa into life.
I spent a year with four year-old Lisa, while her mother went to “away school” to get her MBA. Bride One would leave on Sunday night and return on Thursday, and in between, Lisa would tap-dance in the men’s room stall, waiting for me to finish swabbing down the place with paper towels wet with dispenser soap. It was years before she could distinguish cracked enamel from a suspicious spot. When she was six, she taught me the proper position for the toilet seat, after making an emergency landing in the water. “MOM! Tell Dad to put the top DOWN!”
Lisa was fourteen when I called her one April 12th, to tell her she had a sister named Lauren: my second daughter. I loved every second of lost sleep, every bottle given, diaper changed and each stumbling new step. Lauren profited from the lessons I’d learned from her older sister, but she brought new wonder to my emotional table. Like Lisa, Lauren walked early, spoke early and read early; unlike her sister, Lauren did not like to awaken in the morning. When her eyes opened, her mouth did also, and she cried. The “Good Morning” song I wrote and sang for her just irritated her. But she would sit for long periods on my lap as I read the newspaper aloud, and once she learned to write, littered my life with her “love bombs.” I dug an eraser from an old coffee can, and found “Hi Dad!” written on it. My refrigerator has notes and instructions from Lauren: “Dad, have a good Day today oh, And would you make 15 copies of this paper. (Heart shape) Love you.” She was eight.
A father’s imagination leaps into life with the birth of his daughter, and twists in agony through the stages of her growth, from delightful child to terrible and wonderful woman. I’ve missed a lot of days with my girls, and I am at fault for that. But I love them, and they still manage to love me. I have tried to teach them about peace, love and understanding.
My daughters still call me “Daddy,” the greatest of the nouns by which I have been known.
cjon3acd@att.net