Friday, April 4, 2008

The End Of A Road


Sentimentality is a big part of who I am, as much as I might try to fight it. I'm not a "manly man" anyway (aside from running 3-4 miles a day), but certain emotions in the right launch code sequence and all of a sudden I'm fighting for air. Sometimes it's one or two emotions at once and I'm done.



Like tonight. Today during dinner, I found a piece of paper saying registration for Kindergarten was this Thursday, and my wife and I need to decide whether or not to sign up my oldest daughter. Tough decision, we seriously have not made it yet.



That's emotion number one. Emotion number two came not that long afterward, when we went downstairs to watch "Enchanted," which I haven't seen. On a side note, the chief problem with bringing Disney princesses to life, is I want to have sex with them. Amy Adams is hotter than hot in that movie, even though sex is the last thing on her mind. Maybe it's because sex is the last thing on her mind and she's corruptible. I'm digressing in a major way.



So during the show, the kiddo grabs my size 9 1/2 booths and starts walking around in them. I joke that I'm going to push her over and she waddles/runs as fast as she can away from me, tripping over a blanket and giggling like a loon. We proceed to do this six or seven more times, giggling more and more each time. I laughed, then fought back tears as hard as I could.

This part of her life is almost over, isn't it? I don't feel like I missed it, by any means, and I'm not one of those "it went so fast" guys. It's a cliche because when I think back to the times she's been in my life, it seems like a long time. So long I don't remember life without her, and kind of don't want to. She changed not just the way I acted ("a baby changes your life"...well no shit, it's a baby), but she changed the entire prism of how I look at things. How many more Friday nights are we going to hang out and giggle? How soon before she's got friends and dates and all that? How long before things get really hard and she breaks my heart like all kids break their parents hearts in some form or another? Not long, I imagine, but it all seemed limitless before tonight.

It's not limitless. And the end of this road feels really close tonight, I guess. Again, I'm an emotional light weight and the universe hit the right combo of buttons, but it's almost like I miss her already.

Then again, it's not like I don't have things to do...

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