It's 4:30 am. I have awoken from a dream. My eyes opened with a sinking sadness. A feeling of deep loss. In my dream, I was packing my little girl's dolls into a bin and thinking about which one's she would like to keep to rediscover when she was an adult. Would it be the flashy porcelain ones, or the ones she played with til they were worn? All the while, the room around me morphed into my childhood bedroom.
This day of packing away dolls is not so far away. The knowledge that I have been taking our time together for granted is sharp in the pre-dawn darkness. I have a little girl who writes me emails telling me that she misses me, thanking me for hanging out with her and trying to make plans. Here I am spending hours talking online with people, who I don't doubt love me, but will never love me like she does. They don't need me like she does.
I'm not one to sit in these discoveries of sadness and guilt. I am not one who believes that feeling bad about something is a good for motivation. I used to, but then I spent too much time feeling guilty and not enough time fixing things to move on.
As mentioned, we email eachother, I will set aside time to do that more often. The warm weather is coming and I'd like to go hiking with her again. I used to read to them... But now I wonder is she too old for this? Has something else slipped through my fingers without me noticing?
Perhaps I should just ask her what she would like to do (what a novel idea).
The 4am wake up call of despair, ugh. It happens to the most resilient of us.
It's times like this that I am tempted to take her from her bed and lie her down next to me and hold her little hand (now almost the same size as mine) as she dozes off. Perhaps I will.
Every step begins with now.
