my favorite story
Her eyes are dark and wide, watching me while listening to my every word. Her white flannel night-gown is pulled taut across her curving back and hips as she sits in the bed, but hangs loose and bunched from the knees to her ankles. Her arms are clamped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, her fingers casually tugging and pulling at the fabric. The hem of her gown rises from her ankle to her calf and falls again with each thoughtless grasp.
She moved out on Long Island with her mother when she was three. Twice a month, for the past 5 years, I take a train to spend the day with her and stay late enough to read to her at bed time. I read to her from a tattered spiral notebook. It's one of several dozen that I've brought here over the years. The notebooks are filled with my own words, scrawled on the morning train ride from Brooklyn to Patchogue. It's filled with magic and heroes and love and sorrow. And lots of monsters. Her eyes always grow bigger when a new monster is described to her. Her knuckles whiten and she grips her night-gown a little tighter. She squeals when the heroes triumph and cries when the heroine loses her true love, however briefly.
She doesn't remember the beginning and there will probably never be an end. One day she'll just be too old to listen or care anymore. She'll forget it all, for a while. I imagine some day she'll be going through my things when I'm gone and discover the cardboard box filled with these old notebooks.
I finish for the night, leaving tense, unanswered plot developments dangling in the air as I close the notebook. I tuck her into the sheets, her head swimming with ideas and possibilities. I brush the hair back from her forehead and kiss her goodnight. She reaches up and grabs me around the neck, pulling me in close for a hug. She lets go, falling back on the pillow.
"You're my favorite story, Daddy," she says as she pulls the bed covers tight around her chest.
She's mine, too.
She moved out on Long Island with her mother when she was three. Twice a month, for the past 5 years, I take a train to spend the day with her and stay late enough to read to her at bed time. I read to her from a tattered spiral notebook. It's one of several dozen that I've brought here over the years. The notebooks are filled with my own words, scrawled on the morning train ride from Brooklyn to Patchogue. It's filled with magic and heroes and love and sorrow. And lots of monsters. Her eyes always grow bigger when a new monster is described to her. Her knuckles whiten and she grips her night-gown a little tighter. She squeals when the heroes triumph and cries when the heroine loses her true love, however briefly.
She doesn't remember the beginning and there will probably never be an end. One day she'll just be too old to listen or care anymore. She'll forget it all, for a while. I imagine some day she'll be going through my things when I'm gone and discover the cardboard box filled with these old notebooks.
I finish for the night, leaving tense, unanswered plot developments dangling in the air as I close the notebook. I tuck her into the sheets, her head swimming with ideas and possibilities. I brush the hair back from her forehead and kiss her goodnight. She reaches up and grabs me around the neck, pulling me in close for a hug. She lets go, falling back on the pillow.
"You're my favorite story, Daddy," she says as she pulls the bed covers tight around her chest.
She's mine, too.