Tears

My darling Doodlebugs,

after I put Bella back in the still-warm bath tonight because she threw up all over her clean pjs, and after I had kissed Cecily's head because she bumped it when she was rearranging her dogs before she went to sleep, I cried from tiredness. Then I cried with sadness for the old-yous, the ones you were and will never be again, the little babies I will have no more of to hold and swaddle and smell. Then I cried with joy at the yous you are becoming: at Cecily whose vocabulary expands daily, who is smart and funny and who, with complete abandon, at unexpected and oftentimes inconvenient moments, will throw her arms around your legs in a hug or kiss you with as-yet-unknown passion; at Annabel whose smile is given so freely that you cannot help buut beam back, who screeches with unbridled delight as the dog races past, or her sister makes her laugh, who has such joy in every waking moment and whose ear presses so firmly against my inner arm as she dozes that it leaves a perfect imprint. And thus the tears for the then and the now dried as I smiled at the future that stretches before us all, me and my beautiful, funny, loving, gifted girls. How blessed we are to have you to show us how to be parents.

“Walk a little slower Daddy” said a child so small
“I’m following in your footsteps and I don’t want to fall.

Sometimes your steps are very fast,
Sometimes they’re hard to see;
So walk a little slower Daddy,
For you are leading me.

Someday when I’m all grown up,
You’re what I want to be;
Then I will have a little child
Who’ll want to follow me.

And I would want to lead just right,
And know that I was true;
So walk a little slower Daddy,
For I must follow you.

With all my love, my darling girls,