i love being a father because i learn to be all the things he wasn’t. i learn how to control the rage within me as my child throws a tantrum and i want to do nothing but hold her in her place, to let her know that i am the rock upon which all her fears can break.

i love being a father because i exaggerate my face and make funny sounds and keep all the howling within me at bay. i can redirect the tension and the confusion of just being in the world into sharp focus: take her hands, teach her to dance, try to get this silly little clown to follow some sort of rhythm.

i love being a father because i get to make it up as i go along. i get to be someone other than myself. i learn to be something bigger and stronger and more beautiful than i could ever be. in my child’s eyes i get to be alive even when i am dead inside. i can pretend that i am not broken. we can pretend all the scars inside are healed.

nothng is beyond reproach or suggestion, nothing is beyond repair apparently
we can fix this, we can fix everything, everything but the damaged bodies
it’s built upon. there is no way out, there is no end in sight, perpetual emotion machine
perpetual fault machine. precariously and vicariously, living another life through yourself
watching yourself living another you.
i’m sick, in robot mode, pure sinew and tendon
muscles beat, skin beat, head beat, heartbeat,
just a few hours more. maybe even the liquor, although of course
that would just be catastrophe (there’s nothing inherently wrong with the liquor
except for the fact that it literally speaks to me, it literally says, “aren’t i elegant?
am i not pretty?”)
and the little elf inside goes completely apeshit.
he cackles, “you’re the worm in the bottle goddammit.
you’re the goddamn worm.”

just like that, sneaks up on me, dead slumber in the basement for the night ahead and it’s not so much i hear her but i can feel her inches from my tired eyes, the stuccato pace of her breath before she giggles.
and just when i want to jump up and scare the bejeezus out of her, she leans forward and kisses me, softly, softly. she asks, as i crack open an eye, “daddy, daddy can i stay with you, here?”
forever and ever, forever and ever.

so the little one started school the other day. not really school, a summer program, 2 days a week. mostly to prep her for the real thing come september.
we’ve been prepping her for it, mentioning it every other day or so. trying to ease her into it. and the day of i had worked the night before until early the same morning but i roused myself up and out, ready for a fight because my wife had begun back-peddling on the whole idea to begin with. tried everything, from questioning if the little one was really ready yet, the cost of the summer and subsequent pre-school in the fall, and even promising to take the little one to the park every day. and i was ready for it, schlepping up the stairs, out from the basement of my lair and there was the little one, ready, smiling, unaware of what was really going to happen.
so we get there and there are of course other parents lined up. we wait for a short while and then we go right in. we find her room and a crowd of other parents hovering at the door, their hands still brushing their children’s shoulders, keeping them near, keeping them out of the very classrooms they were supposed to go in. and at one point, the teacher welcomes one child in, and the little one kind of gets swept into it, and the teacher gently separates her from us and the little goes in thinking we’re right behind her.
but we’re not and she suddenly knows, as much as she wants to get caught up in these kids and the tables and the paper and colors of the classroom, she suddenly knows we’re not there and we’re not going to be. a stray finger finds itself at the corner of her mouth as she turns tentatively back to us, bowing her head. and we walk away because it’s for the best and we feel terrible and guilty and proud and afraid.
yet we had forgotten her snack and a change of clothes. we went for them from home and came back to the school again. the wife tried to sneak back in and almost did, she walked right past the classroom where apparently children were still crying, but she did not see the little one, did not know, even the director of the program was at the door because these children were still crying while others were not.
of course we never left at that point, never really had the intention. it was the first day, our little one’s first day. and we were parked right outside, in view of the playground in case they came out as some others did. our cell phones on the dashboard, coffee, books to read, light conversation about how the times were changing. we saw a little boy from the crying class leaving with his parents. the wife mentions she had heard there was a boy standing on top of a table, he was so upset, maybe that was him.
and two and a half hours afterwards, it was time to get her. the little one was alright, eyes a little puffy but holding her makeshift butterfly, a clothespin, some sort of fuzzy cloth wire, a scrunched up tissue with painted spots pushed up the center of the pin. she did not cry with us, she hugged us both and she wasn’t angry or sad. it was as if she had understood that there was a threshold that she had to cross here, and she did so, she wasn’t happy about it, but she did it, because she knew.
p.s. as we quizzed her about how her day was, she says, the boy was crying, he stand on the table, and they were crying, the girls, the boys, and the teacher said, don’t open the door. ‘did someone try to leave?’ and she says no and she says, again, the teacher told me not to open the door. and we ask her ‘did you try to open the door?’ and she nods her head and adds, i wanted my mommy daddy to leave with me.

it rears, on hind legs, rabid and soft. it insists, like some kind of new pain. i don’t know what i am doing as a father, as a husband. in frustration the little one bit me, and i smacked her, quick. but despite that, every time i wake up into the living room she says “daddy” the way some people say happy birthday. how could my father abandon a child like this? i watch my wife’s belly, stare at it like it was going to tell me something. waiting for it to tell me that it’s going to happen again, we are going to suffer again. a month is a long time and even then, even then. i don’t think i fight with her over nonsense, i feel something vital is happening there, something is coming loose. then again, as if my anger can hold it back together. as if we were dealing with fissures as opposed to tears. a new kind of broken, every time.

birthday girl today you’ve rounded a corner where suddenly everything is different and while on the surface of things it all appears the same, some intangible mark has been crossed and you are all things suddenly to me. suddenly bigger, suddenly clearer, suddenly smarter, suddenly kinder.
at one point i saw you get into the toy car your grandfather bought you next to your cousin and you both looked at each other and without saying a word, something passed between you and you each nodded and smiled and looked ahead through an imaginary window.
everyday, suddenly, everything is different now.

the looking glass, the seeing glass, i no longer see you, some distant memory of a thought of a fragment of a voice through a muffled wall in the dark just before sleep.

i remember the staircase, bounding down it, two at a time, i could not wait to get out. i belonged out there man, in the streets, in the day, the night, anywhere like some stray animal that did not want to find a home. roaming, hunting, looking for play, looking for more room to move around.

and when i remember it’s as if it’s through the eyes of someone else, i’ve possessed some body, neither boy nor man, something ageless or imagined, or perhaps a bit of both, all of both. an imagined past that still lives within me. oh, how squandered that little bit of freedom. how truly beautiful.