Our Month.

Despite deep freeze, and unkind cold,
Lily's keeping the chill at bay.
Dons summer dresses, 3D glasses, layers of leggings, and snow-boots
and heads for school.
Sticks out her tongue to catch some flakes
as I hustle her downtown.
Harried but happy -  I marvel more and more at her thoughts, her size, her maturity.
Amazing how much heavier she's become since we began our
ritual-commuting-dance, last September -
Lily,
Hefted,
Into my arms,
on the 59th St. platform.
There's a keyboardist we always descend upon - so at the base of the stairs
I lift her Up
and together we dance as we wait for our connection.
But just today I asked if she'd been eating boulders.
No Mama... she said.

Almost five and she's off..
Almost too heavy in my arms,
increasingly confident in her stride.
Ever close, but busy carving
a path
of her own.

Much is going on in her mind ~ Lots of Alan questions, thoughts, and aches.
Perhaps every month will be this way.
Her curiosity continues to be insatiable...
Tell me another Funny Daddy Story, Mama.
Like so funny one-hundred funny, she says.
So with that I put out a bulletin to his closest and dearest friends.

"Can they be off-color?"
First reply.

Smile.

Surely Alan smiled too.
Trying to keep it G, but our girl's growing tired of mine...
And yet, to hear her retelling a story one recent morning to her school buddy,
girls delightedly fixed on one-another as they washed their hands at the classroom sink -
Lily animatedly sharing an Alan cooking anecdote,
it felt good to hear the previous night's story,
getting further mileage.
To see her friend, smiling and glued to Lily's retelling -
asking questions and engaged ...
How beautiful young relationships are proving to be.

And as her class tackles the meaning of Family,
I am relieved to hear that even as she grapples, this girl is
comfortable
in
her
skin.
She relishes in hearing about her dad.
So as she grows,
the more she knows
about him.

February is a milestone for both of us.
My birthday recently passed and soon
Lily will turn five...
And with that anniversary, I will have known this Lily Love,
 longer than my last.

How it all happened, still manages to stun.
Her arrival in the wake of the quietest quiet, achiest ache
I hope to ever
know.

But just the other morning when she crawled into my bed
and offered me birthday cards wrapped in rainbows
and yards of very deliberate scotch tape,
she warms me with the kindness of her thoughts

I kissed your card, Mama, so it has Daddy's love on it.

She fills my heart in the best of ways.

Ever reminding me,
that the further away he gets,
the nearer he is
within
her.