March 1, 2012

There is still a little fog this morning, enough to make everything kind of blurred and dull, even sounds seem softer and further away.  However, there are birds out again, the pair of cardinals, and several blue jays, and the resident mockingbirds.  It's later in the morning so they are all up now and making music and bright spots of color in this gray morning.

It's Mikayla's birthday today, and she has the day off and got up a few minutes ago and mumbled about coffee while she raided the pot.  She is one of those people who think coffee is breakfast, and since we are going out for an early lunch today, I won't even nag about it.  She's my baby, though not a baby any more, but my last child.  All my children are real individuals, but there is something creatively individual about Mikayla, even her brothers tell her she lives in "K world", a world of her own perspectives that are sometimes poignant and sometimes hilarious.  We all enjoy being introduced to some new aspect of "K world", though I wish Matthew had not shortened her pretty name down to a single letter. <sigh>

So for Mikayla's birthday I am going to send the poem about a father and a daughter, since our daughter is part of both of us and our daily lives.

Egg

 I'm scrambling an egg for my daughter.
"Why are you always whistling?" she asks.
"Because I'm happy."
And it's true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn't
Have seen it as my future.
It's partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I've come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we're told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade every summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn't confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist,
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here's your egg.
C. G. Hanzlicek

"Because I'm happy."/ and it's true.  And it is, though I can't whistle, a skill I somehow never could get the hang of, I am happy in the same way as the poet, with our daughter, with love I've come to think I deserve, with even this early gray morning light, and the trees in the yard, with all the questions that were and have never stopped.  She is the answer to our love, the serendipity of genes; I love all the ways she has made me see the world new and a little tilted, all the love she gives and is capable of, for kindness even when it is not deserved, because it is her choice to be kind, not because you have to deserve it, with her curiosity that is never ending, and her acceptance that some questions will never have satisfactory answers.  Though if I had to admit it, it would not be an egg I would be cooking for her, it would be . . . pancakes!

On this day, I hope she has a birthday that will bring her pleasure, and she can look forward to Sunday with family and food and fun!   In this month of birthdays, hers is the first.  There is something to be said for the lack of planning that has your children all born in the month!