To All the Girls I've Loved

It's almost 3am and we just got home from the hospital.
I really should be going to bed...


Of all the things I've done in my life, being a Dad has been the greatest labor of love that I have ever both embraced and endured at the same time.
It is an overwhelming feeling that comes over me when I think about how much I love my children. Truly, it's almost literally painful when I consider it. It is such a deep and personal emotion that I find it odd to think that millions of parents over history have felt and still feel this same way. It is strange to consider that it is at all relate-able anyone else on such a level, but I imagine it is. It must be.

From the day they each child was born, that deep feeling has existed within me, and everyday it only seems to grow stronger, even when I can't imagine it could possibly be so.

It is amazing from the outset, and for a good number of years it seems the feeling is mutual even when it can only be seen in something as subtle a certain look or gesture and it is returned may times over. For a time it is almost as if every answer, every effort is the best and everything is right. It simply feels wonderful.

As all things do however these things too change over time even if only in appearance more than actuality.

As a dad, among many other truly joyous feelings that are remembered over the years, there exists the sad memory of that inevitable day when I realized my role had shifted from super hero to mere mortal in the eyes of my children and the generation gap was established. It is quite an eye opener and only in retrospect a sign that my children are doing exactly what our relationship was designed to prepare them for, the journey onward into adulthood, but it is painful nonetheless.

I am the father of daughters, and in my limited experience this metamorphosis tends to occur around 12 or 13 for girls.

It's a shocking day that no one warns you about, the day you realize you have just gone from the smartest guy on the world to the guys who couldn't possibly comprehend...well whatever the situation is.

As I have found with many experiences, it is one that must be lived through individually to be understood fully. Just as everyone is different it is a different experience for everyone as well. I suppose this might be why no one warns you of it. There is no verbalization that can truly explain what that day feels like and there is no getting around it, so why cast shadows when, for now, all around there is light to be basked in?

Slowly but surely though there comes an ever widening gap that separates what was once our one world into the two separation of worlds between father and daughter. It's a slow day by day occurrence and that in a way makes its acceptance easier somehow.

This week that slow expanse became the ground almost instantly removed from underneath me, it started at the point when I was not handed the pen but only watched as my daughter signed her own admittance paperwork into the hospital. A startling realization occurred to me at that moment, that she was in fact an adult now. Over the course of the week I would come to see that my position had once more shifted from that of mere mortal to almost tolerable.

It is difficult to explain the deep level of helplessness that sets in at those points where I once would have stepped in and taken the helm, but that I must now step back to relinquish those things to an adult that bears a remarkable resemblance to the innocence of the little girl who needed me in my memories.

I'm certain that this whole experience hasn't been easy for her, and in a certain sense I feel terribly selfish to even say that this week has been a difficult and frustrating one for me as well. The realization of the life altering diagnosis of type 1 diabetes falls in large part on her, but not only on her.

Every advice I offered and every gesture I made toward assistance felt as though I was being overbearing and counterproductive to the girl I have only wanted to love and serve. It appears though that I have limited to no choice in the matters of when and how I can help and I'm simply left to wait and watch, hoping for those times when the help I desperately would love to give might be accepted.

Most of the time I could do nothing more than look on, as the person who was once so much of what had been a part of my identity in raising over the years, did and does what is probably the natural order of things. Perhaps if the catalyst to my realizations had not been the result of being thrust into this diagnosis with every following event we were not prepared for, it might have been much easier to accept. Such was not the case however.

I suppose however if we were afforded the luxury to face certain things by our own devises and in our own timing we might never face them at all, and so facing adversity becomes that means by which we grow.

My logic tells me that this too is a milestone of sorts, however difficult it may be for me to accept right now. She has arrived at the very place all of these years have served to prepare her for. If I could manage only to think with my head this might be OK, but the aching in my heart simply refuses to be silenced when I think of such things.

So what is my point here?
Why am I telling you all this?

I don't know really...It is in my heart to do so and although I am quite tired I am for some reason compelled to write and share.

Take from it what you will. For now I can only as,"Who knows what the future holds?" Only God I suppose and He doesn't seem to want to talk about that to me, or at least not on that level.

God is God.

That in itself is good enough for me.
I suppose it should and will have to be.
For while my world seems to be ever changing beyond my control, it does serve to remind me that God alone is in control and has a plan.

That remains forever unchanged and so in that lies my hope.

It's 4:30 am, goodnight.

d(-_-)b