Ava and I were sitting together on the porch yesterday, watching the rain and listening to birds while she munched on a popsicle (no, Firefox, I’m not going to capitalize “popsicle.” Grab a kleenex to wipe your tears).
At one point, we heard a bird with a very short, repetitive call. I hadn’t paid much notice the first time it called, but then Ava said, “that sounds like clipping your nails.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.
“It sounds like what?”
“Like when you clip your nails. I heard it in bed the other day, and I thought you were clipping your nails in the bathroom.” As though on cue, the bird sang again, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t sound a lot like someone clipping his nails.
“You’re right, Ava! That’s funny.” I brushed the hair away from her ear and kissed her. She slurped on her popsicle; slow, green drips rolled down the side of her hand and fell onto my thigh. I was aware that I was staring at the crooked, unruly part in her hair, wondering at the unseen processes whirring and zapping in her brain. It’s one of those moments that makes you appreciate what it really means to have procreated. After all, her brain is essentially an extension of my brain, with the killer mod of sitting behind an entirely new, different set of senses.
How can this child even exist? How can it be mine? How did I do this? Is there any product in the world more exquisite that takes less work to produce? Every time she calls me “popsie” or blows me a kiss on parting, I take the moment, fold it neatly, and store it next to my heart. They’re all the events I’ll never be able to capture with a photograph or a paragraph, and one day they’ll be lost. Our astounding minds are defined most aptly by their inability to hold forever those memories that make us most essentially human.