Being A Dad

Remember life before your driver's license? I mean, you know there was a time when you couldn't drive, and you may even be able to recall moments when you had to sit in the backseat or shotgun, which if you hadn't called, fisticuffs were likely between you and your siblings.
But odds are, you don't remember what it was like. Those feelings of those times, gone from the memory storage and retrieval bank, fog on a California summer morning, dissipated by midday.

So it is to be a parent. Well, an actively involved one, that is. I remember that there was a time when I didn't have my daughter, but good Lord, I can't remember what it was like. She's so much a part of my every day's decisions, whether in advance and smartly, or in retrospect and regretfully, she's always there.

What's more is that this love expands. Mothers probably don't experience it as strongly. After all, their love is the penultimate expression from Moment 1. And I doubt fathers who get to spend every day with their children get to feel this blossoming deep within the chest as their children grow.

Kennedi every day becomes an amazing person exponentially. As though somehow she can just double in her overwhelming awesomeness just by going to sleep and waking up the next day. There is no way to even begin to describe her, either. People ask and the only words to escape my mouth are, "She's just such a great person. I'm excited to see what she does in her life."

In the past 3 months, she's gone to Europe with the Young Ambassadors with a group of 40 kids and 4 adult leaders (none of which were named "Mom" or "Dad") and every time I talked to her over there, she was giggling with her roommates. Nothing, and I mean nothing in this world puts a more complete sense of peace in a man's being than hearing his child laugh uncontrollably with other kids her age.

When she returned, her leaders told her mom and I that they were so impressed with her selflessness, maturity, and good natured spirit. And we were humbled that our little girl was someone much greater than ourselves.

One of my best friends recently revealed that he and his wife are pregnant. I almost teared up as I hugged him and told him, "Now, your life really starts."

Being a Dad is about the best damn thing a guy can be when he does it right.

A Life Inventory

Not that I want to go. No, no, not at all. In fact, I'm finally learning how to really enjoy my time here, and it would be a damn shame to miss out on some cool stuff.

However, after reading this morning's ESPN special coverage on the kids of Willows, California, the idea of mortality and the chance to live life, to experience life, and to walk away from this beautiful orb of glowing passion with lessons learned, has been bouncing around my lower cranial cavity all day. You know when stuff does that? It's in the subdermal mental layer, getting digested into some form of spiritual energy, like a Snickers bar consumed on the chair lift midway through a day of snowboarding. ZING!

So, it occurred for me that it's already been a pretty noteworthy life. All the things the human animal requires to call it a 'life,' I've been blessed to enjoy. Holding a newborn as a parent, watching them develop and blossom, laughing with the depth of the heart, and making someone else laugh just as hard as they ever have, passionately loving, passionately losing, dancing until the feet hurt and the sweat stings the eyes, competing with every single charge of ATP in the molecule, crying with joy, crying with despair, protecting the weakest lives, flirting with Dionysus and having that fickle god thoroughly exact his heavy penance the next day, feeling adrenaline ignite every sense, giving and receiving the utmost pleasure, tuning into the higher power, learning to ignore the basest instinct and the joy of giving with earnest kindness.

Granted, there's much left to do. Walking my daughter down the aisle, watching my nephews play football, going on my last first date and discovering my life partner (if she truly exists), buying my firsts: boat, house, expensive watch, publishing my first novel, seeing my first screenplay on the screen, going to a Steelers game in Pittsburgh on a snowy day, holding my first grandchild, celebrating our 10 million dollar mark year, backpacking through Europe and Asia, and diving in the Barrier Reef. These are all things, though, and some of them, admittedly, are fairly shallow.

It's been a wonderful 36 years, with strife, struggle, love, laughter, pain, heartache, and joy. The universe has seen fit to provide me with so much, I hardly feel as if I deserve it. So, then, this is my accounting, the scales of balance as I see where they measure, my personal precis: It has been full.

I pray there's much more to come.

6 Years Later, 6 Years Wiser, 6 Years Happier

Walking along with you in the mall
Seeing you look at me during a dinner
Knowing what's on your mind
But not being able to address it because of your fear
My desire to have you forever
Your desire to be had forever
Not the old woman with hundreds of cats
You can have the love of a lifetime
If you'll just open up, open up
You open so much else,
Why not your heart and mouth
The beach, the warm sand, running with you
Looking at your body as we lay panting together
Admiring the curves, the blatant femininity of you
Loving the sex, loving the eyes, loving the face
Carved of granite in feature, wrapped in silk of texture
Being alone in order to be safe
To be safe and what? Alone?
Better to be open, say what's there and risk
Life is risk
In the end, as you look at your assembled prodigy
Do you think you'll regret taking so many risks?
Will you regret losing me?
Will you regret losing us?
I already do.
I did long ago when I first realized you did not want me
Who was I to you?
Was I the answer?
Did I rock your world as much as you rocked mine?
Still selfish?
Still wanting only that which will help you?
I'm here.
Holding your hand walking through the scariest doors.
Leading you when you need to be the little girl
Waiting for you when you need to window shop.
Understanding all of you, waiting for you to do the same.
Love me as I love you.
Open up.
Forsake me your body if that means I can have more of your heart.
Give me you as I give you me.
What good is success and beauty without the right one to share it?
What good is life and happiness without the one who helped you seek?
Fine wine, drunk fools, hang on me girl
Slobbery, silly sex.
Take the day off and enjoy each other.
Chinese dragons, Asian Tigers.
Beef soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, Gatorade.
Loving the stretch marks, the sex of them
Hands over your hips, so powerfully deep the drive
Eyes on nipples, suckling them, watching you flinch
Bringing you again and again and again where only I can take you
Only me. Not even you. Not even you can take you there.
More than skill, purely love.
Mistakes on both sides of the ball.
Poor defense. Silly offense.
Mistakes each team can make up for with hard work.
Successful adults give up not at all.
We choose not whom we love.
We choose how we treat them and how much we forsake for them.
I would forsake all.
Would you?
Once you forsake all, you know there's nothing else.
Nothing in heaven, earth, hell or deep blue sea that compares.
Holding your hand, feeling pride.
Phone calls from you, just A T T E N T I O N from you
All I wanted, just your hands on my body
Make me feel what you won't tell me with your mouth
Through your hands
Woman needs so much from man.
What does a man need from a woman?
More.
More.
More.
Not,
More me.
More me.
More me.
My heart is yours, you can have it back.
Your heart is mine, but I can't take it back.
I wish I could.
Mistakes are here and now.
What is there tomorrow?
Shall we look together?
Shall we look while thinking of each other?
How do you let go of the love of your life?
How do you let go of the one you've dreamed of
Long before you met them?
How do you forget how perfect they were?
By focusing on how human they are?
I cannot.