For Zoe

I guess it’s time to stop thinking of you as small; with tiny features and oh so tiny hands that I can place in mine and cover to protect.   Soon it will be time for you to shelter my aging hands in yours - pleasantly reversing the tides of time.

I guess it is time to stop expecting you to tell me of your teas with Piglet and with Pooh. Time instead to listen to new ways you are trying to approach your career and new ways your are looking for extending family bonds.  

I don’t hear your faint giggle anymore, the one you would have given when your days were young and free.  But I know I’d love your laughter now.  I am sure.  It’d be silent at first and then really loud.  Stopping me dead in my tracks.

I don’t look for times to cook plastic eggs in plastic pans on tiny stoves anymore.  It’s just I’ve stopped thinking about you and food - never really having sat knee to knee.  I think you would probably hate to cook, just so I could do it for you when you’d stop by.  

I can’t tell you why I’ve never written this before, but it is high time Zoe Alexandra.  Twenty eight years is too long to go without a Valentine from your dad!  All those things we never had, we had them in our hearts.  We held them there in trust.  

I’ll do better with the Valentine’s from here on out.  It’s just taken this long to say these words to our daughter who left at Valentine’s

Love you for always,

Dad