My first love
I’ve enjoyed others’ presence. I’ve liked it when certain people are around me. I’ve felt adoration, affection and emotions that made me forget about everything else in the world.
But the first time I felt love was the day I met my daughter.
I know this because there was never any question. No doubt. No uncertainty about what it was, if it was real or how long it would last. I knew at that moment I was exactly what God wanted me to be: her father.
So it’s made it easy for me to keep my priorities in check. Give her 100 percent … not because it’s my job but because this is love and that is what one does when he or she loves another person. My 100 percent may not be enough. It may be pointed in the wrong direction. I may not always make the right decisions, but they are made selflessly, honestly and without concern for my own needs or desires. I do the best I can because I love her.
TODAY MY LITTLE girl turns 12. She is one year from being a teenager and a little more than what’s considered “a few” years from being an adult. Her maternal grandparents never understand why I do not permit her to have her birthday where they live, in North Carolina, even though she goes there every year a few weeks prior to July 28.
This is a day for her, but it’s also a day for me.
I have raised my daughter by myself since her second birthday; her mother removed herself from Kalista’s life about six years ago. I have left the profession that was my passion in college because it was not compatible with single parenthood. I’ve turned down promotions that required overnight trips. I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck. I’ve given up what the world has always told me to be in order to pursue what God has said I am: Kalista’s father.
Over these 10 years together, I’ve found my niche. I have a career, an office and own a nice home and land. She generally gets whatever she wants and things are easier today than they were in the beginning of our time together. I feel like she’s been riding shotgun with me on this journey … we have truly been through it all.
No, she is not the Earthy free spirit she was when she was little and all we had was each other, a garden, a rented cottage and her cat. All that gave way as she became older and consumed with keeping pace with her friends’ interests. She now has an iPhone and I receive a request for her to download some silly app at least once per day. But she is still that innocent child who would give anything to help a stranger in need, an animal in distress or stop to smell a flower that’s a pretty color.
I am so proud of the person of whom she’s taking shape.
“I don’t really want a party,” she said last week. “I just want to have a few friends over.”
“Do you want cake?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’d be fine.”
“What about presents?” I said. “Can I at least give you presents in front of your friends while you eat the cake?”
“Yeah, that’d be okay. I just don’t want a party, you know?”
Nope. I did not know. Sounded like a standard party to me at the time.
So I ordered her cake to be picked up just before her gathering of friends before cake and opening presents that will not be a party. Initially, I asked for the cake that was actually two cakes put together to form the number 12. Then I realized that would be too childish, so I switched to a sheet cake with balloons and confetti made of icing that just read “Happy Birthday, Kalista.” They better remember that damn comma.
This is such an awful experience, I thought. Years ago, I’d spend a good chunk of my paycheck on a $120 cake from an actual bakery custom-made to represent her favorite Disney character. Today I was at Publix, wondering if the ordinary-looking cake was too fancy for the non-party she wanted. Do I get to put candles on it? Should I wrap her presents or just give them to her like a peer and not the guy who considers her the most important person on Earth?
Then I realized this was part of it. This was all part of fatherhood. You get to do the baby things. You do the toddler things. You get to walk her into school for her first day of kindergarten, knowing that would be the beginning of the end of her childhood. I was lucky enough to have these times with her to myself — I shared her adoration with no one. Now I must endure this slight step in a long line of similar steps recently down the path away from me. Out from under my wings that seem more and more every day like they’re suffocating her more than they are keeping her from evil.
Yes, her birthdays are also for me. They are a time of reflection — a chance to remember this day four years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago. A chance to look at who she is becoming and recall what she was before. A challenge to show her I love her without her friends seeing. A time to be happy.
And a time to be sad.
For as much living as I did before I had my daughter, I was never truly alive until she was born. May all of my friends come to feel this someday. May all of my friends who have a daughter know the gift they have.
May they all be sad when she turns 12.
Happy birthday, my sweet girl.
