My Daughter's Day

Somehow I missed National Daughter’s Day on Facebook, so I lost the opportunity to publicly admire my two daughters. And now today is my oldest daughter Kerala’s birthday. 44 years ago, my wife and I walked around our neighborhood in a little heat wave just like today, encouraging her to make her entrance. Which she eventually did, in our house accompanied by two midwives, my sister, the first-grade teacher at our school. As anyone who has birthed or attended a birth knows, it is an extraordinary experience to bring forth and/or witness new life come into being. I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday. 

 

From the first minute to here and now, she has lived up to the miracle of a human incarnation, birthed two children herself and been fully present in the grand human comedy and tragedy, always leaning toward beauty, truth, justice, humor and an eloquent mind capable of putting much of it in words. Even as she faces her first birthday of the last 18 years or so without her husband by her side, she looks it all in the eye and says, “Bring it on. I’m here, I’m strong and I’m ready.” 

 

Of course, she’s not alone in her struggles and sitting at a bus stop bench in Rochester with my newly purchased $.99 birthday card from Walgreens, I copied over Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” to remind her of the glory of fully owning one’s own life. (Look up the poem if you’re intrigued). It was a fitting afterthought to that workshop celebrating rhymes and poetry, the way that poetry not only tickles us with its musical alliterations and consonances and assonances and rhymes and rhythms but can deeply massage the hurting spots with its felt message. Speak the words that give clarity and definition to all our nebulous feelings swirling around so we can feel them more deeply and in so doing, soak in both the sorrow and joy, the grief and the beauty. That’s what each new baby signs up for when they take that first breath of air, what so many adults forget and just settle for getting through. 

 

As for me, I’m back home with six weeks without travel ahead. Packing away the trip, catching up on business and haircuts and such, making new lists to give some shape and definition to the weeks ahead. Today I re-visited my old friend Bach and decided to finally greet another I’ve neglected my whole life, but now want to give him a try. So I sight-read through Brahms’ Intermezzo, Opus 18 and took my first tentative steps into a new language, a new sonic territory, a new emotional landscape. Not easy, for sure, but I’m intrigued. 

 

So one more happy birthday to Kerala and a fond farewell to September, a month that has been so kind to me, so delightful, so meaningful in myriad ways. Let us see what October has in store.