My daughter, Erin, is one of the most wonderful happenings in my life.
When she came into the world, while I don’t remember details, my life changed forever. My lifestyle and my life plan shifted to receive and surround this profound new expression of being a Father to a Daughter.
Based on the book, “The Love Between Fathers & Daughters” by Helen Exley, the following beautiful collection celebrates the magical bond between fathers and daughters.
____________________
The one-of-a-kind shock and awe that can beset a first-time father is almost sure to be Overwhelm of an unprecedented kind. A friend of ours — suddenly awakening to being a father now — recounted to me his first event in parenting: “The infant-care nurse handed my baby to me. She was stiff and howling. When I held her for the first time, I lightly kissed her forehead. She went still, as if by instinct. And, in that moment, I was utterly enslaved by her flattery of my “most evident powers”!
“Thirty minutes later, my new daughter was already sizing me up. She lay in my lap, startlingly alert — scanning me just like I was scanning her! Our gazes moved in sweeping fashion around each other’s bodies, limbs, faces, eyes — repeatedly returning to the eyes — returning yet again, then … My eyes locked on hers.
“Very soon, I had a sense that I was gazing into “Origins” — that this gaze of hers was welling up at me from deep beyond the past’s past. “Of course, that sense of things was all wrong. For, eye to eye, it was She who was gazing into the past. I myself was gazing into the future’s future”
____________________
A few months later, that same friend shared with me what must have been a paragraph from his “Fatherhood Journal”: “She climbed into my lap and curled into the crook of my left arm. I couldn’t move that arm, but I could cradle. her in it. I could kiss the top of her head. And I could have no doubt that this was one of the sweetest moments of my life”.
____________________
“With my father life became an adventure .The minute he walked in the door at night, even the house seemed to take on a new energy, like a surge of electricity. Everything became charged, brighter, more colorful, more exciting ….”All fathers are, at first, heroes to their daughters, even when they’re anything but heroic.” (Victoria Secunda)
____________________
“There have been many times when I thought other people might be better singers or better musicians or prettier than me, but then I would hear Daddy’s voice telling me to never say never, and I would find a way to squeeze an extra inch or two out of what Gad had given me.” (Barbara Mandrell)
____________________
One evening, when my daughter, Erin, was confiding in her mother, my wife Melanie, about a rough patch she encountered with a friend of hers, I, from the next room, heard my daughter’s voice sound forlorn; hence, I too suddenly felt forlorn.
(To quote Honore de Balzac {1799-1850} from “Le Pere Goriot” ) “When you are a father, and you hear your child’s voice, you will feel so close to that little child in her and the one in You who is akin to every drop in your veins; that she and her mom are the very flowers of your life, and you cleave so closely to them that you feel every movement that they make.”
____________________
“The most important thing about our time together was this:Dad never made me think there was anything I could not do.”(Susan Kenney)
____________________
My daughter, Erin, recounts her experience of a serious challenge for her dad (me):
“Almost four years ago now (August 19, 2016), I was unaware that This day would be The day when my life would change forever.
“That morning, my dad dropped me off at the restaurant where I worked. I found myself on duty for 12 non-stop hours, and two extended hours that faced me with a “mad-house” on the main floor. Abruptly, my manager called me into the office to answer the phone for a “private, personal” message.
Doing so I was quickly and concisely informed that my father had been taken to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit; And my mother was now in the hospital’s Visitor’s Lobby, watching for me to meet her there. On my hurried drive, my unspoken inner message of heart to my dad went something like this:
“I Love You, Dad: You are an inspiration to everyone, and such a miracle for our family. I am so blessed and so grateful to have you here with me.
Here’s to many, Many more Years with You”.
____________________
“No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly it as seems exactly as it seemed before.” (Lafcadio Hearn, b.1850-1904)
____________________
“With all my heart, I wish all the loving fathers of this world — cut off from their families by want or work or war — could be safe home again. For I know how much it means to have a father — how much I need him in the small, everyday things — and just how much he needs me.” (Pam Brown, b.1928)
____________________
“As I start the twilight years of my life, I try to look back and figure out what it was all about. I’m still not sure what is meant by having good fortune and success. I knew early on that fame and power are for the birds. “But then suddenly, Life comes into vivid focus for me. And Ah, there stands my daughter.” (Lee Iacocca, b.1924, from “Talking Straight”)
____________________
We, Each and All — Deep Inside — Long to Love and to Be Loved.
I Love My Daughter, and She Loves Me!
Thank You So Much for Sharing this Unique Celebration with me … — PenDell
