You are so curious, Simone. A seer in training. I’m sitting on the couch, watching the Olympics, slurping on a tasty frozen fruit-pop. You totter up with those big blue eyes and study my sloppy methods. I stick my tongue out and brush the popsicle over it. You stick your tongue and wait for the same. Classic. You watch me when I walk around the kitchen island, picking up things you’ve dropped or the fan has blown over. You reach out to hold the broom handle when I sweep under your high-chair. You want to do everything I do. And suddenly I realize my actions are never solitary.

When I stub my toe on the corner of the coffee table and seethe epithets at inanimate objects, you stare with solemn eyes and absorb. Quiet. Never thought I’d come to the day when I care with great earnest what the first words out of your mouth are. Fuckin’ hell or shit on toast are not high on the list. You see, my dear girl, I make no apologies for myself. I’m brash at times, thoughtless. I do not suffer fools lightly, and have the unique hypocrisy of not recognizing my own foolishness. When I see you watching, learning, attempting your own beautiful mimicry, I want to create a different me. Someone other. I want you to witness refinement. I want you to see a father not so drastic with his emotional responses.

But this is not what you see. Or maybe you do at times, when I catch myself. Does this confuse you? To see me respond with restraint at one moment, gusto the next? Will you one day trip over a toy in your bedroom and cuss the ceiling blue? And how will I encourage you to not speak like that, not be like your father?

Perhaps that is the real conundrum with parenting: we see our faults so clearly in the perfection of our young. William Blake (a great, great artist) wrote verses about innocence and experience, how one’s perception of a solitary moment can be altered greatly by their absorption of the material world over time. For him, it was the corruption of children by the dogma of religion. You don’t have to worry about that. But we lose our innocence at some point, our faith in the all-encompassing goodness of humanity. I wonder if a parent tends to be the catalyst to such a monumental change.

Such heavy thoughts today. Under the weight of summer’s heat.