'I will remember it again later,' she said

“While you’re sleeping, don’t forget how much I love you, Melía,” I told her.

(She hears this many nights, along with other valuable admonitions, such as, “Don’t eat yellow snow, Melía.” Some things just bear repeating.)

“I will not forget, Daddy.”

“Oh, good.”

“But if I do forget, that’s OK. Because I will remember it again later.”

This rings in my heart like an eschatological prophecy of a time of trouble. She won’t forget, she assures me. But growing daughters and flawed fathers being who we are, it won’t be long before she will.

What will get in the way of the love? I wonder. Curfew? Homework? Careless words? Wardrobe? Other men? All of the above?

But my little prophetess assures me that the time of trouble will outlast neither my love nor her knowledge of it.

Lord, when she does forget, please remind me that it’s OK. We do that. We lose sight of what we've been standing on. Things loom larger than people for a minute. Ego pounds impatiently at the front door, and Love slips out the back.

But it is OK. Later, she will remember again.

'Daddy, do you love the kitten?' she asked

Since around last Christmas, we’ve been planning on getting kittens. We delayed in part because we need another needy little being in our home like Jaws needs another swimming lesson. But since the girls are getting slightly less likely to torture, and even more slightly likely to actually care for such a critter, we finally took the plunge this summer.

So Pepper "Loveball" Bennie, sneezy orphan Siamese kitten, moved from the San Bernardino City Animal Shelter to the San Bernardino Mountains, a move up in the world both in the mile of elevation she gained and in the tonnage of love she now bears. She joins my wife and me as one of the few who know the joy and the torment of living with our three daughters.

It’s hard to know whether it is ignorance or ignoring of the signs of feline displeasure that leads kids to love a cat in ways that push the limits of the animal’s endurance. Melía holds her for durations that would try even a dog’s patience. Eager to enrich the kitty’s life with adventure on the day she arrived, Ashlyn tried throwing her for distance. Brielle still pleads not-guilty for holding her captive in the treasure chest all day yesterday while we were at the fair.

We always hurt the ones we love, don’t they say?

Maybe a week after we got Pepper, Melía asked me this:

“Daddy, do you love the kitten?”

Let me defend myself before I tell you how I answered. I’m really clear that “love” is this holiest of words that has been profaned by overuse. Call me a snob or an idealist or whatever you must. But for me, true love is a sacred act of will that I define something like M. Scott Peck does in The Road Less Traveled: “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Love is God.

And if I teach my kids anything about anything, I want it to be This.

So I'm all cautious about my answer, which, I was certain, had the heinous power to distort her idea of love for eternity.

"Not as much as I love you, my Melía," I hedged, circumspect as all get-out.

"What?" she asked, appalled at how the soul of any sentient being could be anything but filled with love for her kitten. "Why don't you love our kitten, Daddy?"

"Well, it's just...." I was tempted to bust out my arsenal of words that mean love but don't mean Love, words like cathexis and affinity and like a whole bunch. But I was smart enough not to. "I do love the kitty. But it's a different kind of love than how I love you. A much smaller, much less important kind of love than I love you with, Melía, because I love you so MUCH."

Was that a sign of relief I saw on her face? "You do love our kitten, Daddy. But a diffwent kind of love."

Relieved? Yes, I think she was.

But still a little worried about my soul.

'It hurts my heart when it's not fair,' she said

Someone had gotten more of something than someone else, and Brielle did not like it. Not one bit. She wailed her way down the hall into the great room.

"It's OK, Brielle," I said, ever trying to turn down the volume on the girly drama in my home.

But the volume went up instead. (You'd think I'd have learned by now.) She deflected my poo-pooing response to her protests with fresh vocal vigor.

I winced and waited for the swell to roll past. When it did, she unveiled the why of her righteous indignation:

"It's not fair. And it hurts my heart when it's not fair!"

I loved her more than ever.

As a kid, the closest I came to going postal on my teachers was when they answered a complaint about unfairness with the truism, "LIFE isn't fair." Great. Just be in bed with the injustice, I would have told them if I'd had the words. Be part of the problem. Resign yourself.

Idiot.

I still feel that way. And though I have the words now, I also have the discretion or fear or prudence or whatever you want to call it to bite my tongue and simply resent the speaker. Too often, I choose cool contempt for the person over hot attack of the problem.

As an adult, I've learned more about the shades of justice. I've learned that equity is different from equality. For everyone to get the chance they deserve, some need more help. And when they don't get it, I still get angry.

Life is not fair; my teachers were right. But is the good-kid thing to do about it to shut up and take it?

Or to scream?

Brielle, may your heart never stop breaking when it senses injustice. Like you did just now, may you have the words--and the courage--to assault it wherever it lingers.

God knows you have the voice.

'It's OK, Daddy. It was an accident,' she said

I cupped my hand under Brielle's face, pouring out apologies nearly as fast as her chin spilled blood. The drops were splashing now as they plopped into the swelling red pool in my hand, which sloshed as we cried our way across the sand toward the lifeguard tower.

We'd just been killing time on the beach, pausing our walk for some gymnastics while we waited for Melía to catch up. The somersaults went great, and led naturally into the headstands. I spotted Ashlyn's feet for her headstand, then spotted Brielle for hers. And when I did mine, helpful girl that she is, Brielle spotted me.

I didn't get the memo.

So that when my heel kicked up, Brielle's chin was waiting to greet it. I heard a sharp snap as the foot bone connected to the chin bone, separated by way too little soft tissue, and pounded her teeth together. It was a scary enough sound that the scream that followed it gave me a measure of relief.

At least she was OK enough to scream.

We walked across the sand, Brielle wailing, her Daddy wailing louder but without sound, sober sister Ashlyn in tow.

I wonder now, why was I making such a point of catching the blood? All those blood-borne pathogens trainings? Or a helpless father doing the only thing he could think of to feel slightly less helpless at that moment. Catch blood, and apologize ad nauseam.

"I'm so sorry, Brielle. I am so sorry. I didn't know you were back there. I'm so, so sorry. I was not careful enough. I should've looked back before I did my headstand. I'm sorry, sweet Brielle."

Through her sobs came this gift:

"It's OK, Daddy. It was an accident."

And it is OK. Now, at least. An hour in the ER, 3 stitches, a pop-sickle and a DQ ice cream cone later, she was sewed up and feeling little pain. Yes, the water slide plans for the next day were off, and I'd found another way to sabotage swimming lessons. But mostly, she was fine.

Me? I'm still a little traumatized. I hate it when, after quantities of energy, bribery, coercion and scare tactics spent on stopping my children from hurting themselves, I hurt them myself. And then all I can do is catch blood and say I'm sorry.

But in the trauma, I'm thanking God for lifeguards and doctors who can do more than that. For wives who watch shots and stitches go into their brave daughters' gaping lacerations--and still love me. I'm thanking Him for popsicles and DQ that bridge trauma to treats, and for healing--of chins and hearts.

And I'm thanking God for little girls who forgive faulty fathers even while the wound is still dripping.

'Everyone is a baby,' she said

This morning over Cheerios, Brielle was estimating God's age.

"He's a hundred," she said.

"Even older than that, sweet Brie," said I.

"Yeah, He's a thousand."

"Even older than that. Infinity."

"Yeah, He's infinity, 'cause that's the number that you can't count to."

Also at issue this morning, on the other end of the spectrum, was how old we are. I must have started it when I said, "Ashlyn, you're my sweet, good Ashie-baby."

"But I'm not a baby for real life," Ashlyn countered.

"No, you are a big girl. But you are still my baby."

Ashlyn's eyes widened. "Actually, everyone is a baby."

"Everyone?"

"Yeah! Everyone is a baby. Even you are a baby. Because we are all little--kind of little--and only God is big."

A big thought for a little Ashie-baby. One this Daddy-baby needs to remember.

'Daddy is lying again,' she must have said

Last summer, the girls took their first professional swimming lessons. They LOVED swimming lessons.

This spring, my folks gave them all the birthday gift of another round of lessons, complete with leads printed from the Net on where they could take them. I've been planning on setting it up since school got out in early June.

But first I had to clean out the closet (which was at one time an office) where the printouts had buried themselves since being gifted. That occupied the first four days.

Once found, I set them out to call the next day. They sat out not quite long enough for me to call, but long enough for six small hands to disappear them into the rubble.

The next next day, I extracted my leads from among the piles of sorted stuff I'd removed from my blindingly sparkly clean closet (which has renewed its ancient claim to officedom), and from the piles of spent drawing paper to which my little swimmers had helped themselves.

That done, I found myself on Friday, July 3, when USA celebrated the foreshock of its 233rd birthday, and no one was in business.

No worries. Sunday night, I planned for them to start Monday after work. I built it up, had Mommy send the bathing suits with them to childcare, mentioned it at random times just to get a huge "Yay!!" out of them.

I called from work the next day and got the dirt on the lessons. I had the date wrong.

Darn. They'd have to start the next week. This would not go over well.

When I picked them up, the news was greeted with cries and screams, barely mitigated by my consolation offer to take them to the creek to swim on our own. I explained that I'd messed up on the date and that it was too late to start lessons this week. I was sorry, but we'd do it next week (i.e. "a million years from now").

Another week of planning and hoping--the girls anticipating the highlight of their summer education, me exploiting their anticipation to gain compliance and mood lifts when needed.

Yesterday was the big day. I had the times, I knew this was the session start date, and I'd get them there at 2 o'clock--opening time--so I could sign them up for the best time slot.

It's just that they were having so much fun that morning pretending to be pets inside those Tupperware storage bins. And I was having so much fun figuring out online if I could save money by cutting my home phone line. It was 2 now, past lunch time and they were asking for Rice Krispies in bowls just like pets eat their food.

That would be fast.

But somehow it was not fast, and when we got down the mountain to the pool at 4:29, the swim class coordinator tried to be nice as she explained that we had a snowflake's chance in a hot place of snagging a spot in the 4:30 class, the last of the day.

At 4:40, the girls were still in the bathroom helping each other put on their bathing suits. Normally I'd be itching for them to finish the job and get the hot-place out here to start the lesson. But yesterday, I considered letting them play at changing for half an hour (an easy amount of time to kill with such a task) and then telling them they were so slow they'd missed the lesson.

But I didn't.

Instead, I muffled the self-loathing tantrum that was going on in my head, told them the truth, and apologized. Again.

"We'll start tomorrow, girlies." They didn't even cry this time. And that was worse, because it gave me mental space to imagine what they must have been saying:

Daddy is lying again.

Another plan thwarted. Another promise broken. Another hope dashed. Another doubt planted.

They stood there, sweet and stoic, as I signed the paperwork and forked over the cash for lessons that really, truly would start tomorrow (i.e. "sometime slightly sooner than a million years from now, but at 5 p.m., still way too far away from today"). I knew it was for real this time. But the doubt in the air squeezed my throat tight.

I compensated with the increasingly lame creek idea, throwing in an ice cream cone this time. No protests. No complaints.

But no delight either.

Today, I had an afternoon meeting. My wife took them to swim lessons. She drove 40 minutes from work up the mountain where a friend was watching them, hussled them into the car and down the mountain, out of the car, across the parking lot and into the bathroom to change. They were in the pool for their 3:30 lesson at 3:31.

When I saw them afterward, they were bubbling with stories about what they'd done in class.

"Daddy, I floated on my back--withOUT any help!"

"Daddy, I jumped in by myself!"

"Daddy, I put my head under the water!"

After celebrating with them for a few minutes, Ashlyn added another boast. "And Daddy, we made it on TIME to swimming lessons today!"

"That's awesome, Ashlyn." Finally, someone had gotten these sweet little fish to the pond. Go Mommy.

"Um, Daddy, I have an idea." Ashlyn was bright-eyed. "After today, Mommy should drive us to swimming lessons."

'What does love mean?" she asked

Melía tells us she loves us a lot. Scores of times each day.

And at least as often, we tell her that we love her.

We quite enjoy it, although it might get kind of nauseating after awhile if you were here listening.

"I-love-you-so-much-you-are-so-cute, pweety pie," she'll say to me, rapid-fire. Kisses--wet, wonderful and splattered all over my face--come with the deal.

"I love you so much, my mini-Melía. You are my wonderful, sweet, beautiful princess daughter."

"I love you so much, Bo-Bo." (Bo-Bo? Don't ask me.)

This kind of dance goes on throughout the day, from the first hello in the morning, to the final good-night in the evening. (And on to the five or six loving good-nights she manages after that, before we stop responding.)

But one day, in the midst of one of these syrupy sweet conversations, she asked,

"Daddy, what does 'love' mean?"

I know now that I answered way too quickly, considering that this may be the most important question in the universe. The fact that I don't even remember my answer shows how profanely hasty I was to field this holy inquiry.

But I must have said something like, "Love is sharing, and being nice and good to people, helping them, even when they are not nice to us." (Accurate, but so blasé. I should have spent days pondering it, like I'm still doing with the "When will God rest again?" question.)

What I do remember is her response: "Oh, that's fun!"

I buy that.

Is love easy? Rarely.

But when we manage to pull it off, is it fun? Absolutely, my mini-Melía.