It doesn't take long. Or, it doesn't seem long does it? I remeber very vividly, waking up when it was still dark and running to my sisters room to see if she knew if Santa arrived yet. I can still smell the air that burst out of the pillow case at Halloween when I jammed my head into it to see all of the different kinds of candy that I so methodically collected. The attempts at fine art that accompanied the painting of the eggs just before Easter still haunt my fingers. I was just a child, in many ways I still am.
Yet, I'm a father; just yesterday it seems. Though my daughter rolls her eyes at me as if to imply that I..."I"...am no longer cool, I am convinced she has no clue how cool I am...or was...or, never really was. I have a greater attachment to her favorite (my favorite) stuffed animal, Draggy, than she probably ever had. Time, T I M E, keeps sloggy by. Now, my cleverly crafted songs about nonsense receive only a huff and a shrugg of the shoulders.
She is much older now than I'll ever be. It seems I have misplaced a number of years and spend more and more time trying to find them. I know parenthood is trying to teach your child how not to need you. Showing them how to make up their own mind; to make mistakes that they will tell their kids about.
So, I will hold down the fort. I still like bright, multicolored Christmas lights. I still take hours to prepare and carve my pumpkins so they can scare everyone (pretty much myself only) in the neighborhood. Peter Cottontail absolutely lives in the shack at the top of Peters mountain on the way to my grandmothers house. She will come around, I..am..extremely cool.
Just a fleeting thought, of a fleeting moment, in the fleeting life of a fleeting father