Tuesday, March 25, 2003

there could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you

Willow is eight months old, and I have deep secret hopes that she'll be Daddy's Little Girl someday. She has my eyes -- such big, blue eyes -- and my love of music; her mother's feet and quite likely my ADHD. She hates to sleep and loves to laugh. She grins at me in the morning, halfpebble teeth and wide wet mouth, when I wake up on weekends; she lights up when I come home from work. It's a dear package, and I covet her like there's no tomorrow.

But when it comes to sleep, a little girl wants her Mama, and I'm okay with that. Darcie spends a lot of time these days in the bed near the baby, nursing her to sleep and back to sleep, at ten and three and seven and once again drowsily, hardly stirring, half awake, at two in the morning.

As she gets tired Willow shakes her head side to side to stay awake, rubs her eyes, begins losing focus. There comes a point past the yawns and the drooping head when she needs her Mama, and no one else will do. My women hit the bedroom, and I am exiled, a distraction.

Once, months ago, she fell asleep slung low in my rocking arms, an orangutan hold. Once, and only once.

Until today.

Twice, today, once by accident and once again to test the hypothesis, with Trey on the stereo loudly and me at the computer, the baby leaning forward, facing outward straddling my thigh, my arm around her from the outside and under the arms, the head lolling impossibly sideways slowly like a slow leak tire, the eyelids drooped and then featherlight she was asleep.

Oh, heaven is a place I know, and it is anywhere my daughter sleeps. Paul Simon's got nothing on me.

In Willow's honor, tonight's Tributary bedtime storyreading celebrated parent/child love stories: Love You Forever; Mama, Do You Love Me; Guess How Much I Love You. I know she wasn't listening. I just needed to tell the universe.

Playlist follows. Note the Trey triple-play, eh?

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Eddie From Ohio -- Good At That
String Cheese Incident -- Drifting
Slaid Cleaves -- Horseshoe Lounge
Dolly Parton -- I Get A Kick Out Of You
Kasey Chambers -- Little Bit Lonesome
Acoustic Syndicate -- Why Not
Nenes -- No Woman, No Cry
Trey Anastasio -- Drifting
Oysterhead -- Oz Is Ever Floating
Phish -- Bouncin' Round The Room
Stevie Ray Vaughn -- Chitlins Con Carne
Bela Fleck -- Sunset Road
Keller Williams -- Best Feeling
Brooks Williams -- Great Big Sea
Spike Jones -- The Jones Laughing Record
Rani Arbo -- Butter And Egg Man
Jorma Kaukonen -- Bread Line Blues
Johnny Cash -- In My Life
Norman Blake -- You Are My Sunshine
Lucy Kaplansky -- Just You Tonight
Les Claypool's Frog Brigade -- Locomotive Breath
Skavoovie and the Epitones -- The Coffee Connection
Barenaked Ladies -- Light Up My Room

posted by boyhowdy | 1:38 AM |

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