I met this girl in the fall of 2001, in the month after our nation was attacked. In the wake of September 11th, I doubted if I would ever find anything beautiful again. I was wrong.
I didn’t know much about this whole parenting thing when we first met. I knew even less about daughters. So she was made to endure the entirety of my rookie season in the parenting big leagues – every disciplinary fielding error, every strikeout at bedtime.
Before you become a parent, you imagine you will teach things to your kids. And you will. But after you become a parent, you realize it is they who teach you so much more. And she’s been a Hell of a teacher.
She is the reason I wanted to be a good father, and a better father, and a better father than that.
She’s the answer to the first question I ask myself every morning, and the last question I ask every night.
To say I am proud of her would be a criminal understatement. To say I adore her would insult the fire in my heart. If there are words that are adequate to express what I feel for her – perhaps ancient and maddening syllables muttered by a forgotten or unknown god in his dreaming slumber – I know them not.
And so, bereft of the tools I need to express what I feel on this, the occasion of her birth, I shall have to make due with these meager words: Happy birthday Riley. You have stretched our hearts and brightened our days immeasurably. I love you always, my Pee Pie Poe.