She isn’t paid for…

(Photo: Dad and his first born)

Dad loved babies. He loved them when he was young (just 21 when Sherry was born), and he loved them when he was old (he wrote a poem for a great-grandchild just a few months before he died). He wrote the piece below after he received a dunning letter from the hospital where Sherry was born.

SHERRY

                She isn’t paid for, but she’s ours.  She’s little and fat and she has dimples.  She has funny little wisps of hair and eye lashes that women dream about.  She’s an angel.  She’s a little devil.  She’s ten months old.  Only ten months and we can’t remember when we didn’t have her.  She keeps our house in an uproar.  She’s bold and brazen.  She’s coy and demure.  She’s ours.

                The world is her oyster.  She thinks we are here only to please her.  I guess we are.  She has an enormous appetite.  She tries everything she finds including cigarettes and bright green June bugs.  She can’t understand why or how her daddy could grow tired just playing piggy back.  She talks in a soft sweet little voice.  She screams like a banshee.  She can walk six steps, and does—when she feels like it.  She looks like her mother.  She looks like me.  We don’t know who she looks like.  She can do more in less time than anyone I ever saw.  She’s ours.

                When she smiles, and she’s always smiling, she shows two tiny white teeth.  They’re very sharp—believe me.  She loves her mommy very much and gives her big wet kisses.  Then she sticks her finger in her eye.  When I want to listen to the radio she has loud stories to tell and emphasizes same with violent gestures.  And I have to listen.  She has no respect for the integrity of my magazines.  She tears up my Sunday paper.  She blithely pulls the pages from borrowed books as though they were petals from a daisy.  When scolded she sits up very brightly and patty-cakes.  She waves bye-bye when no one is leaving.  She refuses to do so when they are.  We could never do without her, and she’s ours.

                She climbs as high as she can.  She bumps her funny little nose and tells her mommy in no uncertain terms what she thinks of such a cruel old world.  She takes her bath in the kitchen sink and drinks from the faucet.  She takes her shoes and socks off and immediately tries to put them on again. She wakes every morning with the dawn.  So does everyone else.  She likes to dance.  She sings very sweetly with an accent that sounds slightly Scandinavian.  She croons very softly to her little black cat.  She kisses the top of his head.  She pulls his tail.  She minds very well.  She sasses.  She leads us around by the nose and we love it.  No, she isn’t paid for—yet—but she’s ours.

                                Her Daddy