Brigid and Nick

In about ten hours my little girl is getting married.

I am so happy for her–and for Nick, my soon-to-be son-in-law. (Yikes!).

For the past couple weeks I’ve taken to spending a little time each day reading through my blog archives and taking in various posts where I’ve mentioned her, or given stories about how she did things or thought or just otherwise enlightened my life. It’s been remarkable fun.

(Feb 4, 1998, 9 years old) You have to remember that I started “blogging” back before the term “blog” ever existed. Back then it was a Web Journal, or just a journal. I wrote it mostly to post writing progress to a few friends on ways that would keep me going. Life, you see, is 10% what happens, and 90% how you react.

But then occasionally I would note something about life, and some of the writing here became a bit more personal, dare I say, a bit deeper. (March 24, 1998, 10 years old). The journal became something more personal, a place where I explored myself, and tracked my writing, and, yes, occasionally documented things about what it was like to be a dad (Nov 10, 1999, 11 years old) or a husband (Feb 24, 1999 (Lisa)). Looking back, the period of about five years where I think the journalistic element of Daily Persistence was at its peak, and that spanned Brigid’s life from about eight to thirteen. It was a remarkable time period. It’s a time where she developed the beginnings of who she was going to be (Feb 6, 2001, 12 years old). It was when she began to decide what was important, and learn to stick with them (July 18, 2001, 12 years old).

I could link to fifty posts here. But time is slipping away, and now there is only a bit over nine hours until my little girl gets married. Life it like that, you know. You get busy doing things and it slips past in beautiful little snippets that you don’t notice unless you happen to be in the very right place and looking at them in that just right way (Sept 7, 1999, 10 years old).

So as we near that moment in time, and since it seemed to apply, I’m going to close this entry with a direct quote from my post of October 17, 2000, when Brigid was eleven years old, and had just informed me that my escorting services would not really be needed during Halloween later that month.

When she was two, I used to tell her a mixed up version of “Puff the Magic Dragon” for her bedtime story. It was the only story she would let me tell. Puff and his friend Skyfox, who was a magician, would save a elven girl or boy’s parents from the Wicked Witch by shouting “Boo Wicked Witch, Boo.”

And then they would have a party, and Puff and Skyfox would go home and go to sleep.

I conservatively estimate that I told that story 1,000 times.

You may note that there is no Jackie Paper in my version. Jackie Paper grows up, you see. He gets too old for Puff’s magic, and goes away.

So, I didn’t let Jackie Paper into my story.

But time passes. And now I see I was wrong.

Jackie Paper was there all along. He was there in the brown eyes of a young girl who said “One more time,” when I was done. Who gave me hugs when she figured out she couldn’t wring more from me. Jackie Paper tricked me. Maybe there is a reason Jackie is a gender-neutral name.

It allows her to slip past grown-ups who don’t see quite right.

And so this version of Jackie Paper is growing up. And just like the one in the story, she’s leaving things behind … just as I did when I grew up. Just as Lisa did when she grew up. Sometimes it pulls at my heart. I’m having problems finishing this, actually.

But let me tell you something.

Watching her go through these things is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever been a part of.