She’s five years old. Maybe six. Small enough that a dad’s arms can reach full ‘round her twice with room left to pull her in tight, hug-close. Such a pretty thing that you never want to let that hug loose. Never let her go.
Her hair is blond and longish. No particular style, because I don’t know much about that stuff. To me, it is perfect as it is – but I brush it on occasion – because that’s about all I’m qualified to take on.
I don’t know what she’s wearing, but it suits her exactly. I’m taking her all in because it seems like forever, but what I’m really looking at is her eyes. She isn’t crying because she doesn’t do that much. Ever, really. But if she wasn’t so stoic I might have seen a tear by now. It’s clear she is sad. Somehow, I can tell she is profoundly disappointed.
She says it out loud, at last.
“I didn’t get invited,” she manages. The tears were close, but she hardly ever goes there.
“To what?” I ask, knowing that the options for a five year old are limited. “Are you sure?” I’m hoping for clarification right off, trying to find some solid footing, some point of reference to make this all better. It’s a dad’s job, you know.
She is free of my hug but I am still squatting down before her so she’ll know she has my undivided attention. It is no performance on my part. It isn’t my job to slay dragons. It’s my passion. Clear the path. Teach, when possible. Inform, when relevant. Prepare her for the inevitability of her flight from the nest and watch with confidence when she first leaps into thin air.
That day is still far off. She’s five years old. Maybe six.
I’m waiting for her reply, but something is tickling in my head that she cannot already be worried about things like invitations. Then, something rattles around that time passes much too quickly. Remember this moment, I’m thinking.
Her hurt is palpable, but all I can remember is holding her close to me and how it seems like so long ago, but – didn’t I just let her loose?
“A birthday party.”
“Maybe they haven’t been sent out yet.”
“Everybody else got one,” she says in a voice almost a whisper. I know she wants to say more, but she won’t. Her point has been made. Nothing more need be spoken.
“Do you think it might still be in the mailbox?” I ask. Obviously, it is expressed with a naïve vestige of hope. I don’t remember retrieving the mail, but somehow I know that there was no invitation. Nothing at all addressed to my daughter. “Why don’t we check?”
Normally, that would be a mistake. There is some kind of confidence, though. Like an invisible sword and shield designed especially for attacks upon the children of men. Dads with daughters who think and act beyond their years. Those girls who won’t cower in the dark or cry out without cause. Who won’t much ask for help. I’m saying the words that should be the shield, if the construction of that thing holds true. I believe my own words.
“Let’s go look,” I say, and we walk through the hallway and out the front door. For some reason, the mailbox is across the street, one of those metal things with the red-raise-it flag and the hinge trap door. Someone is at it, just as we step onto the porch. I don’t recognize the person at all.
“Hey,” she calls out, looking in our direction. “There was something else in your mailbox.” The woman I don’t recognize at all holds aloft a square-shaped piece of correspondence.
“Looks like an invitation,” she adds, with a smile.
I look down to see the reaction on the face of my little one, but her expression is unreadable. Could be relief, but it doesn’t really resemble that. Joy would involve jumping or shouting, or some such thing. I want to believe it’s a look of appreciation for my simple suggestion to re-check the mailbox, a grownup response to her dilemma. Could be she’d already thought of doing that. She’s quick that way.
In the end, I don’t know. Just seeing the invitation in the woman’s hand had to end the disappointment. Her eyes are no longer cloudy, though. She is glowing like sunrise. My best guess? The world was righted – set back on its axis – at the moment the paper envelope escaped the mailbox. Nothing else to say about it.
Her arms came up toward me and I wrapped mine around her twice and pulled her hug-close. It feels just as real as it did so many years ago, back when she was five years old. Maybe six. I don’t want to let go.
Ever.
They’re funny like that sometimes, but sometimes not funny at all – just filled with lovely memories of those precious days in the nest with invisible swords and shields held aloft by dads in dreams…
Working late on the stacks of books, my head spinning with titles and prices and shelf locations – and thinking about my little girl with girls of her own – looking for those dream interpretation references!
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St., Broken Arrow OK!