BE MINE

There are times when I catch myself staring, completely mesmerized by her, lost in the minutes of hours we share. I know every parent feels similar towards their own, but there’s something captivating about creating a person and then watching them grow. Every day there’s a new discovery on both her end and my own.

She reads a new word sounding it out as she goes and I notice the arch in her foot curves in a little more than yesterday. Her favorite color changes temporarily as does her outfit for the third time in a day while I watch the signs of toddlerhood, the wrist rolls and the abbreviated walking patterns, morph into a little girl.

When she laughs, she laughs with her whole body and her eyebrows turn red when she’s angry. She prefers dresses over pants and has a memory that rivals the smartest of elephants. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it until the end of my days, but she’s the best thing I’ve ever done and the truth in that statement continues to prove itself at every sunrise.

It’s hard to believe she’s mine. It’s hard to believe that I once did something deserving of such a blessing because she’s nothing short of a miracle. She was sent to her mother and me as the answer to a question we hadn’t yet asked, the solution to a problem we hadn’t yet acknowledged, a dream come true that we still haven’t woken from.

She tells me she loves me completely unprompted and she asks to cuddle when I least expect it. She tests the limits of her vocabulary and the volume of her voice and phrases her sentences in her own adorable way. She smiles when she loses her train of thought and again when she rediscovers it. She shares her toys when encouraged and her opinion regardless.

She has her mother’s eyes and my hair, her mother’s toes and my fingers. She looks best in purple or green, the same as her mama; she wears her heart on her sleeve like her old man. She says please and thank you and she apologizes when she’s wrong. She’s the best parts of both of us all wrapped into one and sometimes I can’t stop staring, I can’t stop watching my heart beat outside my chest.

No matter what, she'll always be mine.