Dresden: Do you remember? The first time you saw her? The first time she looked at you? Do you remember that change? That shift, when the universe suddenly tilted? Do you remember looking at her and knowing that you would never, ever be quite the same person? ... Dresden: I don't know how you said it back in the day, but I'll bet you anything her first word was 'dada'. ~~Jim Butcher, Skin Game
I think mine was a bit less dramatic than that, because I'd already been primed to go in the right direction, but I remember the day she was born, because at about midnight the night before, we'd dived into the car (bought two months prior) and I'd gotten behind the wheel with my temporary license (because I'd only passed the test one month prior) and made a high-speed run down to the hospital.
I'd already made the decision to change myself, you see. It started with the driving license my father had been telling me I really should be getting; that he'd been telling me for years to get and it had been too much trouble to get.
Amazingly, seeing those double blue strips changed my mind and priorities in a tearing hurry; I got my license in three months, and most of my driving was done in an intense burst in the month of December, driving four times a week, with double sessions each time.
But I remember sitting in the recliner they offered to incipient fathers in the delivery room, and sometime in the wee hours I suddenly sat up and realised that in a very real sense, my life was over.
Because it was no longer my life. That, starting in less than 24 hours, Father's Day would men something different to me.
That I was no longer the end point of my line. That one day my life would end, and somebody would carry on, and that somebody's life would be very different, depending on what I was able to give that... somebody. And I'd resisted even speaking of that somebody by name, semi-jokingly calling her The Chestburster, because I was firmly convinced that if the universe realised how much I would come to care for her, it would arrange to have her taken away.
So I became a father.
The day we finally brought her back from hospital was the day I realised that this could be, not just frightening, but awesome. Because the moment Xueling got propped in my lap, she tried to stand up.
I found that if I stabilised her, she could do that.
This was my first clue that she was going to be quite... physically adept.
This was also the first time (not counting her delivery) where she ran into my patented technique of pushing the upper-right hand corner of the envelope until the cancel stamp comes your way.
So it wasn't long before she was running about with the assistance of a walker too big for her. I note that we don't really have many good pictures of her at the time, probably due to crappy camera.
And... one year later:
Two years later:
Two years and chicken pox:
Three years:
And now:
You know how you're supposed to change when you're a parent? I suppose it's happening. She's learning to read. When she works at it it's all good. It's when she backslides that I start to learn patience, or at least meditative techniques to keep my blood pressure down.
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