Wise men say, only fools rush in.
Senior year has been less than it was marketed to be and getting to the finish line, a line separating yesterday from tomorrow, was a feat onto itself. I am alone in a condo writing this and forecasting what that day will be like. Waking up here and you, there. I can already feel the result of pride running up my arms and goose-bumping them the way Eyes of the World does (to both of us). What you’ve overcome to get here. The things you’ve said yes to, what you’ve said no to, and what you’ve pressed pause on. From the day you were born, you’ve been resilient. You had a gear available to you that you didn’t quite know how to access yet. But you have. This year, you’ve shifted into it. Juggling senior year issues and breaking parents and the weight that comes when things get heavy. I knew you were resilient for sure, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I do now.
You, standing here at both a finish line and a starting gate, I wonder how you’ve survived it, and I can’t help but wonder if, given similar circumstances, I would of. And that’s what you hope for as a parent; that all the love and effort and sacrifice you put into raising your kids, raises them up and past anything you could have accomplished yourself. That’s what I’m thinking about here as I write this. Where you are against where you started and how many steps existed between there and here.
Shall I Stay, Would it be a Sin?
You are 4. Possibly 5. The age is less important than the reality that you’re too young to be doing what you’re doing. And I’m videoing it. On an ancient JVC-180 camcorder that weighed as much as a toaster oven and had similar output quality. You would always turn on when it was turned on, but this was unique even for you. You had acquired the phrase, ‘I’m thinking Up, I’m thinking down’ from some teen Disney movie, or inappropriate Cartoon Network slop or some interaction with a classmate and future Newport City felon. Regardless, you were singing it over and over (and over and over) again into a battery-less plastic microphone and growing more sincere with each stanza. The pace of your phrasing continued to quicken until you caught yourself and noticed the crowd of family members that had assembled to quietly take in your performance. Rather than let the shyness overtake you, you drop into a slow, very deliberate ‘I’m thinking down sometimes, sometimes…”, end the show and immediately ask to see the footage. I had yet to put together that this was your essence. Performing. Adjusting. Recalibrating. And Reviewing. This approach to life would come to serve you. You just didn’t know it yet. I remember looking at the video myself wondering where this kid came from. But also feeling very sure about where you might go.
Like a River Flows, Surely to the Sea.
We are in the pit at Gillette Stadium. You are wearing a yellow-flowered sundress with pink pansies and a flower crown you bought in the parking lot. Your hair is curled. Your makeup is there but just enough to make someone wonder if it’s perfect skin. We are 15’ away from the stage, with your sister and associated group of friends, close enough to see the deep lines in Bob Weir’s face, but I can’t take my eyes off of you. You light up when you realize, after a few seconds, that the first notes of Eyes of the World are landing. And you scream once the song settles in. You’re moving to the music in a way that is not normal for someone your age and with so few songs under your tour belt. But it is the result of more than a decade of dancing and discipline and practice. And while I’m sure I was listening to the music, all I can remember is thinking about how gracefully you moved, how you knew exactly where to bend and dip-even with your eyes completely closed- and how your smile would build from the corners of your mouth, slowly, and spread across your face. The way it always does when you realize that the moment you were in, was one worth savoring. I took your lead and closed my own eyes and thought about all of my good fortunes and how every single one of them took a back seat to this one.
Darling, so it Goes-Some Things Are Meant to be.
You’re dancing again. This time at Olivia’s wedding. And this time you’ve drained a combination of Courvoisier, several glasses of wine, an assemblage of High Noon’s and, to your definition, ‘Something red and peppery, and disgusting.’ But no one can keep up with you. Not your family. Not your friends in attendance. Not the twenty-somethings contorting themselves to keep pace. I pull you aside and tell you what I’ve always told you. That if all these dance lessons did nothing more than make you a beast at weddings, it was worth it. You laugh it off and head back onto the floor and a small circle has widened and folks take turns dropping into your orbit until they burn up and beg off. I am on the periphery, taking it all in having no interest in even trying to keep up. I am watching you command the floor, the room, without you having much of an idea about what you’re doing. I swallow down the lump forming in my throat that visits anytime a mix of emotion and love and daughter come together. I think about your own wedding. What it might look like. Knowing that Elvis will be playing, and I am projecting forward to what I might say in front of a room. Trying to parse all of the love I have for you into some small consumable bite. I think about how impossible that will be and I’m lost for a minute. 2 Be Loved by Lizzo ends and you walk back over to me, sweating, and put your arm around me and ask me where I am. I mention that I’m right here and you say ‘No you’re not Dad, but I love you’ and I think, for a minute, about writing that down. I don’t, realizing there’s little chance I’d ever forget it.
Take My hand, Take My Whole Life Too.
You’ve been working on this one with Kaleb for a while. Your duet. You’re only 14 but carry yourself, longer and cooler than that. You’re performing to the Hollies, Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress and are about to be thrown into the air, multiple times, across the 2:30 performance. You are nervous but you have your version of a game-face bolted on. I’m standing alone at the front of the North Country Auditorium, within a few feet of the stage after being asked to not stand and not be within a few feet of the stage. You are wearing a short black dress; black patent leather dance shoes and your hair is pulled back into a ponytail with a black ribbon. For the first few minutes you and Kaleb interact with each other, he is pursuing you, the Long Cool Woman, while you duck and dive away from him in an attempt to create a certain amount of tension between pursuer and pursuee. He finally catches you and, following script, throws you into the air across what seems an impossible distance. Your form is flawless and when you stick the landing, and at the height of the Hollies singing, ‘That Long Cool Woman Had it all. Had it All.’ you strut off-stage looking back at the pursuer with a smirk that takes the air out of the room. I’m happy the crowd is going crazy, both for your own ego, but so that no one notices the puddle I’ve been reduced to. I’m feeling something more than pride, but I can’t put my finger on what it is. You come out from backstage and high five me but you keep sauntering past and I wonder, not for the first time, where you came from.
For I Can’t Help, Falling in Love With You.
It is your first day at United Christian Academy. You are about to turn 9. You started a few years prior at Newport City but after a series of startling events, not the least of which was being named ‘person in charge of calling the principal if any of the students flip over a desk and attack the teacher’, we decide to initiate a move for you. As with punches before, you roll with these and are happy to don a uniform made up of a green plaid skirt, white blouse, and polished black shoes. We park the car; I remind you to grab your lunch and ask if you’re nervous. ‘I’m not sure’ I remember you saying which suggested to me you both were and were not. You’re holding my hand and I can’t delineate where your sweat ends and mine begins. We walk up a flight of stairs and then another and someone holds the door open for us and someone that I no longer remember asks, ‘Are you Maeve’ You say ‘Yeah’ and we keep walking past her into the front foyer.
I make the assumption you’re too old, or too nervous or too not nervous to kiss goodbye so I tell you to have a great day and that I can’t wait to talk to you after you’re done from school and to remember to eat your grapes because they’re green and firm just how you like them. I spit all of this out as quickly as possible because a bell rings and it’s a Christian school and I feel like an interloper. I spin to leave, and you ask me if I’m forgetting something and then take full two strides to me, throw your arms around my neck, kiss me and say, ‘I Love you Dad.’ You turn, dip around a corner and you’re gone.
I walk back through the front door, down the steps, past more skirts and pleated pants and white blouses and into my car. I toggle to Elvis’ I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You on Spotify, a song you’ve already identified, at 7 years old, as being your wedding song and realize that falling deeper in love, at least with your daughter, is beyond anyone’s help, even the King’s.