This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Feelings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I’m honestly not sure how I am going to make it through childhood. Not mine, of course, but my daughter’s. There is so much to learn, so many new experiences, and so many pains along the way that sometimes it feels as though my emotions would shatter my very soul if not for the fact that I don’t want my daughters to see me falter.
Until Sofi, and then Natalie, was born, I had always thought that people saying that I would never understand the love for a child was hyperbole. Love is love, I told myself over and over again. Fortunately, now, I know the truth, and because of it I will never be the person that I was before. I will never again be able to put myself first – and I will never want to. I will never be able to see things the same way again – wondering instead how they must look through my daughter’s eyes. Taste will be for the joy of nothing more than wondering – will Natalie like this? And Sofi? Everything I touch will be through their hands, wondering what they must feel.
With that joy – expanded by what I see in their eyes – comes the heartache that comes with seeing their pain, that I seem to feel exponentially greater than my own. When they are sore from shots at the doctor, unhappy about not getting to go to school, or just plain ol’ every day sick, it is amplified for me and the pain is nearly unbearable. Yet, no matter how much I want to take that pain or discomfort and make it my own, I must instead live with it and simply hold their hand to share with them the experience, limited to what I can take away and hold as mine.
None of this means that I have to give up living for myself – instead it means that I get to live again the years of my life that I have forgotten or undervalued. I get to see what my parents must have seen and wonder – am I giving enough to my children so that they may appreciate all the world has to offer and all that they bring to it?
Papa
