So much happens before consciousness dawns. Our earliest years are hidden in mystery, at least with regard to our conscious memories. Few of us remember before the age of 4, and I trusted my daughter would be no exception. So even before April arrived from Korea in February 1985 at the age of almost eight months, I began writing her letters, morphing after a couple of years into poetry, that I hoped would serve as early snapshots for her to muse back upon as she grew older.
These efforts are more accurately snapshots of the whirlwind amazement within a first-time daddy’s heart—towering tenderness and giddy wonder—as he beheld the magical budding of a new blossoming of God. Hidden in mystery may be the soul of a child but perhaps not the heart of a father.
Dear April,
You’re not yet 13 months and yet you are already multifaceted (exactly what one would expect from a diamond). What I mean is you have so many ways of expressing so many different feelings. You’re an alive human being, little April, and I pray I don’t dull, discourage or otherwise inhibit this experiencing and expressing of the full range of emotions and soul responses within you.:
--your wonder eyes as you behold something that captures you, arrests you, like the mandala stained glass window at Unity;
--your pride and pleasure in yourself when you succeed in a new endeavor—almost squealing in glee—as with the present walking;
--your no uncertain madness (if looks could kill) at us sometimes, particularly when you don’t want to stay in bed or in the car seat;
--your absorbed attention sometimes as you pass something back and forth from hand to hand—like a clean diaper—for quite a long time; “caught up” in it in a museful contented way;
--your unrestrained outstretched requests sometimes to be picked up and held (and readiness to raise a ruckus if thwarted);
--your nestling on my lap, sometimes backing with such confidence and affection against softdaddy (who’s melting with pride and love);
--your babbling to yourself like a little chirping bird in the morning as you find things aplenty in your crib to play with and talk to;
--your earnest look to me and an “uh” that unmistakably is a request for me to give you something or to pick you up—the little girl knows what she wants and is not bashful in asking (shall we say demanding?);
--your quiet pensive shy look when meeting some people and your turning away from them if it seems just too soon to be making friends;
--your guttural horse laughs when tickled or bellyblown;
--your joy in being held high or swung low, afraid of neither;
--your strong attachment to me with the reaching for me when insecure with others;
--your beaming satisfaction when we come get you in the morning (well, some mornings) as you’re standing and bouncing and smiling in the crib;
--your fairly steady protests against this changing table business several times a day and occasional monumental tussles with daddy as you squirm and stretch with all your writhing strength to turn around and go after something (or just get away), and your screams of frustration and, let’s be honest, rage at daddy when said attempts are in vain and you have no choice but to endure.
Enough for now. And the joy of it is I sense that this is the diamondness indeed of a little person who is already giving clues of her future diversity and depth, of her multifacetedness. Hey kid, you’re already something else. Of course I wouldn’t deny some partiality affecting my judgment a tad, but others’ reactions/responses to you seem to corroborate my own studied opinion that you’ve got a lot going for you, diamond child.
Later poems about April, and many as well about our son Adam who arrived in early 1989, can be found in my Deep Joy, Steep Challenge: 365 Poems about Parenting. But this present volume’s focus has been on my daughter’s hidden years, hidden, that is, with regard to her own conscious memories but decidedly un-hidden with regard to her father’s heart. When your heart is filled you sing, and words on a page are this father’s way of singing.
May they sing first of all to April, hopefully helping her in the years to come increasingly, in Walt Whitman’s words, to celebrate and sing herself as she ponders the songs she called out of her father and mother right from the start.
May they sing to my life-partner Penny who has shared with me the great privilege and joy of cultivating April’s garden and watching her blossom over the years and whose own manner of generosity, more practical than lyrical, has more to do with singing action than singing words. A more loving mother of April and Adam I cannot imagine.
May they sing to other fathers and mothers who may smile to be reminded, beyond the fatigue and the worry, of the mind-boggling wonder and the heart-bursting joy.
May they sing to spirit-journeyers everywhere, ever alert to manifestations of the infinity of tenderness called out of us by children.
May they sing to the Spirit of the universe, addressed among other things as Father and Great Mother, bursting with pleasure to keep doing it again. How not wax lyrical to recognize within us when we love God doing it again?
A final way to try to sing it:
When a body reaches upward (like a flower in spring),
when a mind opens bright to a world of light,
when a personality deepens daily into endearing singularity,
how disbelieve in miracles?
Parenthood from afar may seem tedious and constricting,
but up close it catches your breath,
draws on every one of your powers.
To be a father or mother is grand introduction
to a universe that flowers!
