If I should have a
daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way,
she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to
me. And I’m
going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn
the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my
hand.”
She’s
gonna learn that this life will hit you,
hard, in
the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But
getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how
much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that
cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that
Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear
the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your
fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to
heal. Believe me, I’ve tried.
And
“Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know
that trick, you’re
just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so
you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save
him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you
can change him.”
But I
know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of
chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate
can’t fix. Okay,
there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots
are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let
it.
I want
her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look
through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a
human mind. Because
that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll
be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up
with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone
booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing
on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your
knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more
reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than
the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many
times it’s sent away.
You
will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting
over and over, and no
matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your
mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And
yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her
to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but
don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
“Baby,”
I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and
you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for
more.”
Remember
that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always
apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the
way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
Your
voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when
they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your
doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you
tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.
