There were wet afternoons when she would grab a plastic bucket from her sandbox and trace the curb. Occasionally, she would stop, set her bucket on the spring grass and bend low. In time she would return, and in the bucket would be fat purple night crawlers and pale earthworms as thin as spaghetti. It resembled a squirming ball of grey string – viscous and foul – and I would look at her, and she would smile.
I sometimes wonder where that little girl went. Or I wonder if I might have imagined it all. But then I will stumble across photographs of her – or photographs of her and me – and I know she was no figment or fancy.
We look to tomorrow and so miss today. It is a tragic fault of ours – one the poets have long noted and one I did not escape. Too often my thoughts were elsewhere: on money and bills and work. Rather than burn each moment she and I shared into memory, rather than observe her every detail from the slightest grain to the smallest thread, I let the fog of ambition and self-interest sweep between us.
There were other errors as well.
Frequently, I failed to say what should have been said or – worse – said what I shouldn't have. When life hurt her – as life will do – and the moment called for consoling the punished, I condemned the punishers instead. When achievements were accomplished, my praise contained caveats to keep it up or to do even better.
Poison is no remedy.
Words of congratulation should carry no qualifiers.
At times I was a poor host. I dismissed the notion of boyfriends without the courtesy of much explanation. I mumbled something about there being a time and place for everything. Boys, of course, still showed up at my door like some wide-eyed stray. I let them in though I welcomed them like I would a flat tire.
Or I made my worries hers. When I saw her at night, I did not always drop the weights of the world I had picked up during the day. Childhood is brief and should be forever brilliant. It was my job to keep the clouds away. Instead, I brought them home and let their shadows darken places where light had been.
So now when she and I cross paths and I observe her deep compassion for the less fortunate or hear her frequent laugh at something someone says or watch as she assiduously attends to each moment that each day brings, I breathe a sigh of relief. My disadvantages are not hers. She is a better person than I am, and I am glad.
On those days when it fell to me to pick her up from kindergarten and take her to the babysitter, I would reach over the seat once she had scrambled into the back of the two-door Pontiac I owned, and together we would hold each other's hand. Tomorrow, she graduates from high school, and in three months she will be on her own.
Even if it meant making the same mistakes, if I could do it again, if I could relive the past 18 years, I would and without question.