The Record: At First Sight

Off the rails

She’s funny. I’m not used to that. I wonder where she gets it from.

From me? Is it possible that I could have passed on something positive to my children after what a mess I am?

There will be a time, I know, when she will come at me with daggers, when her own therapy will lead her to conclude that things were pretty fucked up around here.

And can I even blame her? I didn’t learn a damn thing about having a baby from an orphanage before I hopped a plane to get one. I’m such a fucking jackass.

But, on occasion, this girl shows me so much. Like the night we get lost and in a fight, the night we name-call and then, ultimately, apologize.

How could I have gotten that one good trait into her mind as well? The capacity to apologize?

This little girl teaches me every day how to love someone who carries tragedy. How to love someone when I carry tragedy, myself. Her fierceness and fight have been lessons for me, sometimes terrible ones.

But then I think about how incredibly lucky we are to have found each other here, as she prepares to exit her childhood. After the difficult and sometimes hopeless situations we’ve endured, here we are.

Fated?

Who knows?

For all the times I thought that all was lost, it turns out that our relationship is not over, not at all. This isn’t a new start for us; that’s not what I want to call it. But it is a course correction in the best possible way, and when I look ahead to the future, I find myself picturing her in it in ways I haven’t before. The terrible fear I felt before has dissipated, and there is hope in me that all is not lost.

We stand here beside each other with all of our hurts and shames and tragedies. We stand here together nonetheless. We might not be best friends now.

But maybe someday we will be.