I cupped my hand around the back of your head, your small, pink face with its puckered mouth and closed eyes seeming too small to be human. Baggy outfits, nappies that fit like comical sacks covering you from your thighs as thin and curved as bananas over your entire waist. Weightless.
Doctors and specialists threw out thoughtless suggestions about your future health – she’ll always be small, might have problems with this and that. They didn’t say it, but I heard that old curse from times when farmers knew how to size up the newborn young in spring: runt.
No, no, no. From the first day, my whole being has refuted them – you were tiny, the smallest baby I’d ever seen and held, but you were utterly perfect.
Within a few months you grew to be a solid ball of happy baby. Charming fat wrists and ankles and delightful cheeks.
Oh, those early years were a blur, with your toddler brother hurtling around on his plastic bike with the grating wheels, the endless laundry, cleaning and impossible time management. Mobility was your chance to get closer to the action – you refused to sleep, especially not in your bed. You’d have your bedtime story, feign sleep for a bit and then emerge like a tiny intruder later on. I’d find you sleeping in the passage, trailing your blankie like a cape, or just on the floor next to your bed, with your doll, Middle Baby, at your side.
A memory – the time you actually broke all the rules of possibility by falling asleep standing up, arms on your bed, feet on the floor, knees dipping from side to side, but managing it.
From early on, you were considerate – perhaps wanting to maintain the status quo and avoid cross voices, but then making sure that people around you were happy. Always ready with an infectious chuckle but just as likely to have huge tears wobbling on your eyelids. Emotions that refused to stay hidden.
It’s hard for a child whose emotions are so visible, you can’t pretend to be anything other than what you are, but, on the whole, you’ve been a happy one.
I think your peanut allergy forced you to take on a level of maturity that was unusual – taking care to ask at birthday parties if the snacks had any nuts in them and learning to read food packaging hieroglyphics early on for the telltale “ALLERGIES” legend. Other kids could gleefully stuff their faces, while you had to slow things down and make sure that it was okay, sometimes politely declining treats unless full assurance could be provided.
The acceleration of childhood was prevalent with you as you careened though primary and then high school, developing a fierce determination to achieve along with a strongly developed sense of right and wrong and the desire to see good vs. evil identified and encouraged or avoided, accordingly.
Some children are child prodigies, precocious in their natural abilities – your genius has been systematically earned through hard work.
Best of all, you seek to be fair in your dealings with people and analytical in the ways in which you accept humanity. I admire your growth as a person and that you prioritise justice, recognising that we’re never too old to learn more about people, life and how it all works.
I’d like to say that you can be whatever you choose to be but we both know that’s not true. Life can get in the way – not everyone can be a success at their dream future scenario - but I am convinced that you are determined enough to take your circumstances and overcome trials and challenges. Your fierce heart is your superpower.
To anyone, ever, past, present and future, who has underestimated you or pigeonholed you as quiet, small, or undermined you as a person, I know you will prove them wrong not out of spite, but because you are an exceptional woman entirely capable of writing your own story, with deep veins of humour, compassion and joy running through it like lines of crystal in immovable granite.
I’ll always be on your side, even as you move towards independence – I’ll always be that proud dad cupping your tennis ball head in my hands, imagining the very best for you.
Xxx
Dad.
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