A Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Life and Death

My oldest daughter was born yesterday.

Or so it feels. It was the summer of 1995.

My wife Meg had been in labor for more than 25 hours. She was 13 days overdue. When we checked into Providence Portland hospital on a hot July evening, and began settling into our birthing room, the nurse told us we couldn’t stay, that Meg was not dilated far enough. As Meg went through excruciating contractions the nurse said, “I’ve seen women go on like this for weeks.”

The nurse left our room. I locked the door from the inside. “We’re not leaving,” I said. I kept the door locked until the nursing shift changed at midnight. Soon, our new nurse came into the room, took one look at Meg and with a firm grasp of the obvious proclaimed, “You’re not going anywhere. You’re having this baby.”

Six hours later Julia cried as she took her first breaths and I cried as I took in the miracle of my first daughter. I was in awe of the primal force of childbirth, the unfathomable exhaustion of labor and delivery that every mother endures.

The two days we spent in the hospital were a metaphor for the next 18 years of fathering my daughter. There’s been anticipation, joy, pain, exhaustion, and relief, all in abundance.

There is nothing in a man’s life that can compare to having a little girl. I got lucky and had two. I have a treasure trove of memories. I remember the vulnerability I felt that bordered on terror, with the thought that something could happen to end my newborn daughter’s life. I remember playing a game I called “Volume Knob” when Julia was a few months old, and enjoyed shrieking at the top of her lungs. We had another game called “Hunt and Kill,” in which I would slowly wave my hand past Julia’s face, and she would grab it, stick my little finger between her toothless gums and bite down.

I remember reading to her at night, sometimes so exhausted that I fell asleep with her book open. I remember the sound of the electric monitor that connected us to her bedroom in our Laurelhurst home.

Julia had a glorious spiritual insight a few years later when she asked, “What if when you die you wake up and it’s all been a dream?” She was three or four.

At Halloween she would place her order for the evening’s entertainment: “Tell me a spooky story. But don’t make it too scary!” That winter it snowed in the Columbia Gorge, and I drove her to Crown Point. We made a snowman that she named Rollo. “Let’s sing a Christmas carol!” she said. And so we did, much to the amusement of others within earshot.

We went camping. And fishing. And to the park almost every summer night after dinner. When I’d leave for work in the morning, she would run to the front door and declare, “You can’t leave without a hug and kiss!”

Time passed. Soon she was satisfied with just yelling from wherever she was, “Huggy kiss!” when I left for work. We took our own road trips together in the summer, to Lake Tahoe, Santa Cruz, and places in between. I took her to dinner at the Red Robin and a movie when she was in fifth grade. I loved it so much I vowed to do it every month. We didn’t go again until she was in high school. Like a lot of dads, I spent my weeks in the thick of thin things–career stress, economic uncertainty, the busyness of everyday life.

There’s nothing like a little girl. And there’s nothing like a teenage daughter. “Huggy kiss” gave way to “Bye, Dad,” and then to nothing at all. We went into labor as a dad and daughter. The contractions became more frequent; the pain sometimes unbearable. What girls in this culture go through in adolescence is soul-piercing. Sometimes Julia showed and told me how much she loved me; sometimes she did the same with how much she hated me.

We just flew to Boston, where she is starting life as a university freshman. Like thousands of dads who’ve brought their daughters and who will be bringing them to schools in recent weeks, I feel the tug of conflicting emotions. Relief that we made it. Joy at the enormity of what she accomplished and overcame. Gratitude for the happiness we experienced together. Pride in what a strong young woman she is. Sadness for the absence of what we didn’t find together—or at least haven’t found yet. And sadness as well for the inevitable shortcomings that separated the father she got from the father she wanted and the father she ultimately needed.

Julia’s time had come to move on. I didn’t anticipate the loss that I’d feel, as many dads do, birthing a daughter into this chapter of her life.

I couldn’t leave Boston without a hug and kiss. Surrounded by her dorm mates, Julia preferred a non-dramatic separation. I understood that. I was 18 once and starting college. It was the day before yesterday.

So we shared a very brief hug. Then I walked away alone into the night to find a cab.