So.... i have watched each of you sleep, tasted the perfect bloom of your sweet Child breath, thought of myself as your great protector, the keeper of precious fragile flames. i chastise myself as i watch you awaken into the dawn of your youth, into the embrace of young adulthood. i listen to your stories as told one to the other and others, your voices pure and beautiful as fine silk, texture my ears may touch. As i listen, i know you have suffered, been staggered by sullen blows of doubt. i know you have been afraid of me, your father, that i might come crashing through those doubting walls, to discover you with the ghosts of your imperfections. In the night, voices do speak to me, the tiny ones of those of you who have come to go and those who are still here but grown past the Child whispers i aspire to hear. i answer them with selfish humble tears in my eyes and sympathy for what has passed in my breathing, for they are the protectors of my imperfections. i tell myself I have done my job well, for you need me less now than ever before and never as much as i imagined in the feeble throes of my attempts at perception. The far echoes of tiny voices ring down the spiral canyon of my years. They speak to me in the perfect symmetry of Childhood wisdom. They fairly embrace me to stand. There are those who say i talk to myself. They are right, of course, for you are myself, the very one i was addressing, the one i have become. i may answer a question from a score of years gone by and by as i watch my daughter with her daughter or my son making words to speak to a brother twelve years his junior. i am your father, that is all i am... compleat. You give me the strength of your pride, the beautiful revelation of the knowledge of our shared imperfections, through it all, carry me to a place of unconditional devotion, love without fear, lighting candles in the dark corners of my soul. i am made to be free, a man. You have been and remain the perfect sentinels of my journey. If i come to see beyond the shadow, If i come to walk into and through the fire, If i come to feel, to love and be loved, If i father.