Frankie's 5

The fact that an entire year has passed since I was dodging a downpour to load-in balloons for your fourth birthday is nearly incomprehensible. Everyone with grown children is quick to tell you that "It goes too fast." You hear it so often as a parent that it begins to sound more like empty small-talk than the dire warning they intend. I remember when you were born the idea that you would be in our lives every day for eighteen or twenty years felt like an eternity, virtually indistinguishable from forever. 

That is clearly not the case. Of course, one day you will leave home and begin a life of your own, but this year has also made it clear that there will a thousand less dramatic or consequential moments that you will be, in one way or another, on your own. 

As your life has gotten bigger it has also gotten more complex, your budding personhood already exceeding the limits of what I can, or even should, fix. There have been times you have been left out among your friends, and I saw it make you sad. I have seen you nervous to do something or meet someone. I have observed, because I recognize it in myself, your social battery draining and your needing to retreat to your own space or your home.

In those moments, my instinct is to somehow make it right. But in each case, you found resilience on your own. You went and played happily by yourself, you bravely did something you weren't entirely sure about, or you found a way to steal away and take the time you needed without making anyone feel slighted. 

I know these challenges are small compared to what you will face as you get older, but seeing your first brushes with the true nature of the world keeps me up at night. On these days, I have laid in bed after you are asleep and wanted so badly to come back in, wake you up and tell you how proud I am of you, how much I love you. 

By the morning you are full of new thoughts, ideas and plans for the next weekend or the next Christmas (no matter how far off it is). When we walk across the park to school you tell me what happened yesterday, or what slap bracelets you want for your party, or what you will be on Halloween (no matter how far off it is). Then we get to school and you put on your backpack and charge in the door; you look back, giving me a little wave as you go to your cubby. You are already leaving us a little bit each day and it's the proudest I have ever been of anything.

Love,
Dad