Her boyfriend (Aiden) calls her LP.  I usually call her Pepply and strangers who meet her for the first time often rename her Penny.  She’s Penelope.

I’m her favorite.  She prefers my lap to a high chair.  She chooses me over her mother when it’s time to put her hair in pony tails.  She steals sips from my cup.  She stumbles through the house in my shoes.  She squeezes my faces between her chubby palms, leans in to touch her nose against mine and stares into me with her coal black eyes.  “I love you, Daddy.” She loves me because I’m weak.  She’s kryptonite in a diaper and I’m Superman on my knees giving her another popsicle because her gravelly “please” is the sweetest sound in the world.

I watched her in the rear view mirror tis morning, singing along to the radio.  “Is this you, Daddy?” Her hair up in a bun, strands of it cascading down around her chipmunk cheeks bulging from a wad of grape gum her mother would never let her have.  She’s beautiful and brilliant like her mommy.  She can count to ten and she’s only two.  Nurturing.  She puts band-aids on me when I burn myself cooking, kissing every boo-boo.  “Awww.  You’re alright, Daddy.” Soft-hearted.  Crying when a grasshopper’s legs are yanked from its torso by big brother.  Funny.  What other two year-old turns flower stickers into pasties and dances around the room yelling “booty” to pry a laugh from the serious grown-up glazed over working at a desk?

imageI think about all she is today and I want to stay here in the now.  But I can’t.  If she’s this amazing this morning what will she be tomorrow and the next day? I fast forward in my mind.  She’s playing basketball and clarinet and she thinks she’s fat or ugly or dumb.  She’s doubting whether she’ll make it through middle school safely.  I think about all she’ll be on the other side of acne and awkward proms and how she won’t know it yet but she’ll become a woman.  I leap ahead a decade from then.  She’s in love with a boy who’s not good enough for her.  He plays guitar and wants to move to LA or New York or Nashville.  They’re in the car on the way to a restaurant.  He has a surprise in his front pocket worth three month’s pay.  He thinks she’s beautiful, soft-hearted, and brilliant.  Her hair is up, pieces of it cascading down around her cheeks.  He wants her to be his bride forever.  But she doesn’t know it yet.

Today she prances around her bedroom in a tiara and a diaper.  We sing and eat potato chips together and laugh when she toots.  She’s the last little kid in the house.  She’s inspiration in flip-flops.  She’s amazing.  She’s a friend, actress, accountant, boy magnet, mother, scholar, teacher, artist in the making.  She just doesn’t know it yet.

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