My Daughter

I write this with my newborn daughter in my arms: our second child. Overwhelmingly grateful to the skilled hands and kind hearts of those that delivered her to us.

Everything is both simpler and more complex at the same time: our family a fierce and clear focus, our context a frenzy of logistics and washing.

There is always a sense of disbelief, that i am somehow allowed to do this, to be a parent. It seems a very grown up thing to be.

When i look into her eyes, i still have that sense of wonder, staring into the vessel in which ‘self’ will be forged.

My son?is now two and a half years old: a proper little person, expressing wonderment and surprise as the world unfolds around him. He knows what seagulls are and asks me to name every single train the internet has ever known. He is finding the place for everything, and mentally sorting everything into it’s place.

‘Sister’ is now firmly sorted as ‘family’. He ceaselessly wants to know where his sister is and what she is up to. He wonder if she wants to share his banana.

This transition, this navigation point, i find myself poorly prepared for, as though the door has swung open and i am uncertain what comes next. I idly wonder if this is ‘what’ life is about, and if so, then just how important is that pile of paperwork. I find myself casually stripping complexity out of other parts of my life: things that seemed intransigent suddenly of no meaning.

The arrival of my daughter lets me see just how far my son has become: when you see the change every single day you fail to see the length of the journey. From one to the other. It makes these first weeks the more precious, because whilst with him they seemed endless, with her they feel transient. Treasures of the moment, each autumn day.