On the eve of her 18th birthday

Tomorrow I turn 18.

I celebrated my last fading moments of childhood by, of course, watching trash reality television and “working out” in my garage. The two correlate.

I go to college in August. That college is rated “#1 hottest girls.” The two correlate.

Following my brief sweat-fest (mostly because it’s 100 degrees in my garage) I decided to cool off by taking a dip in my generic California swimming pool adjacent to my generic California home, the home my family has been occupying for 3 years.

Just down the 101…

Wearing a mismatched bikini I did not, of course, feel comfortable in, she threw herself into the cold water, which tamed the heat transpiring off of her warm skin.

She looked up at the sky. There they were, just like always. Paint strokes across the ever-blue. Whispers. Cotton. She remembered. Remembered the sweet smell of chlorine, the wet in her hair, the dry on her face. Looking up past the redwoods, seeing infinity, feeling small. Feeling happy. She was happy. She is hap…

In true creative-type fashion, the moment I start to think about a feeling, the moment that feeling vaporizes like droplets on one of those scorching SoCal days. Like clouds.  Yet in that moment, that very moment, catch it before it’s gone, I realized something: I will never be that happy again. Will never be as happy as she. Because her happiness knew no boundaries. It knew no judgement. It knew no “I felt like they were all looking at me” panic. Just true, uninhibited, pure, electrifying childhood bewilderment. Childhood joy.

She has freckles, you know.

I could be sad. I could try to defy the passage of time. I could pretend, keep pretending, I like to play pretend, can we play pretend, Daddy? But I’m not going to be sad. Because I know that her happiness—the kind of happiness that brings tears to one’s eyes—should be reserved just for her, for that moment, for 8, for 9, for 10. And it’s time, now. Time to discover a different kind of happiness, a big-girl kind of happiness. And that’s ok. Because in my heart, my beating heart, I know that she will always exist— playing in that swimming pool, at that house, in that backyard, with that breeze, with those redwoods, and those clouds, and infinity.