Lessons
written by: Eli Garcia
Screamed at you, something stupid, don’t remember.
Hated myself then, but so proud of you, sat there, all cuteness and calm confusion.
Hung skewered on your smart little frown, watching your gears whirl and click, working out this stupid lesson I taught you.
Wished I could claw back this sour little moment, gone now, become you forever.
Found it was I who needed comfort, to pick you up, cuddle and laugh, sweep it away and forget it.
You reached toward me, palm out like a traffic cop, mumbled around your binky and turned away, “mean dada, go.”
I live reluctantly in Southern California where I alternately celebrate and dread the slow but constant change that becomes so much more pronounced in my life the older I get. My family includes my wife, who is my light and my storm, and my new daughter, who continues to surprise me daily with both her existence and her ability to stretch my capacity for love, and for terror, into previously unimagined territory. I occasionally garden, which I’ve learned to treat as a study in controlled chaos, only without the control. So, my life, like most, is generally full of hopes and dreams, successes and failures, aspirations, trial and error, peeves, inspiration, ignoring of mortality, doing stuff, not doing stuff, and occasionally standing in the backyard gobbling radish pods off the bush with my very excited toddler. A pebble on a beach with billions of other pebbles. Sometimes I write.
Latest posts by Eli Garcia (see all)
- Willow’s Perch - July 13, 2022
- Out From Her Shore - November 18, 2019
- Were I A Poet - August 18, 2019
