Toothless wonder: she has no teeth, yet she has one of the brightest and most beautiful smiles.
Brooke has been anticipating this little bud since Mariana was three months old, while I was away contemplating not just about the one specific tooth, but the entire Mariana who had been such a mystery to me for so many months.
Watching her sleep, I find that I am grateful for the few minutes of leisure time while she lays with her eyes half-open and swaying like ice in a water glass. I am grateful for so much, especially for the short amount of time I have had with her (one-third of my allotted summer break), though I wish it was more.
Brooke wrote to me saying that "our histories are written into our bodies," which I had agreed to when I peered over my limbs: some scars here and there, and much more muscle than I had remembered ever having. Until September 12, 2008, our histories were exclusive to our own bodies when Mariana came into this world and showed us that our collected history could cry, pee, and poop.
Like Mariana's tooth, her beginnings do not start to show right here and now, but with time, her mother and I hope not to knife out Mariana's history in a gruesome sort of way, but let it bud out and grow naturally, without forcing anything we aren't ready to show or admit.
I have always told people that Mariana already has quite the story, and until she can tell it herself, here we are, Brooke and I, laying out what went down once upon a time and what is going down right here in the now.
As Mariana continues to sleep, I hope I do not do the same: I hope to become disciplined about updating from my end because I am a father; whether I am near or far, asleep or awake, there is a little girl who I have helped create and for whom I am going towards the Midwest to make something of myself. I am one more father who must go far away, and not another father who merely forgets about his spawn.
Twenty years old, full-time university student, varsity rower, young adult, and papa,
Signing off.
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