I walked into my daughter’s room today to watch her sleep. Yeah, you might think that’s creepy, but I don’t. I like watching her infant form breathe, hearing her tiny inhalations go out, in, out, in and let me know that she’s alive. It’s a peace I can’t accurately put into words, knowing your child is safe and happy, dreaming of all the fun stuff she does with and without me during the day. As she learns her magic, something I can’t do, I smile and watch in wonder. Even though I panic when she floats around, sometimes to a level I know she will die from if she releases her hold, I revel in those moments. I congratulate her. I praise her. My heart soars on the wings of a thousand eagles at the sight. They’re the most alive I’ve felt in years. She has learned something new, and I was there to witness its inception.
Yes, my son is in the same room. He is just as precious. But a father’s connection with his daughter… it’s vastly different. Imagine all the hard work you put into your best projects over the years, all that effort instilled into what you love to do to better yourself and those around you. Now, imagine that concentration and that focus... all that drive wiped clean.
No. Wiped clean isn’t right.
Imagine that drive reallocated to focus on a single entity, a solitary being made from the bosom of your love with your wife, given corporeal form. Love made tangible. Touchable. Irrevocably real. Knowing that every decision and action you take will teach her how to love her future husband, knowing that every step you walk she will follow, it is completely overwhelming. Paralyzing, even. All your other projects fade into the background. All your attentions divert to the care and raising of this product of your personal donation.
After all, it is I who made her.
Without my seed, there would be no child. She would still be a lone egg among millions, given no destination but into the garbage dump once a month, like so many of her potential brothers and sisters. She would be without thought or contemplation, without a choice to exist, die, breathe, suffocate, eat pizza or sushi, drink juice or beer, date Shining Star or Emerald Fizz, hop, skip, jump, trip, cry, experiment… everything that builds a foal into the glorious mare she will become.
I kiss her on the forehead and smile. She twitches slightly, then returns to a peaceful slumber.
I think about what she will get into as she grows. What kind of friends will she make? Will she be a loner like her parents were before life brought us together? Will she become a social butterfly like my sister? Who will she first date? I was my wife’s second. She was my first and only. What foods will she favour? Music? Clothing? How will she dress? Where will the One call her? What roads will she have to take? The possibilities are endless and exciting to me.
Maybe she will grow up and pick up a guitar and become a rock musician. She might decide to hunt down stories nationwide, traveling from one end of Equestria to another as part of a journalist team. She could take up sewing and apprentice under Rarity. She may even be content just researching and become Twilight’s student, like the bookmare is to our esteemed Princess.
Any way she likes it is enough for me. The excitement of the future brings joy to my eyes.
I understand that before that the fights and the screaming, the temper tantrums and the diapers, the throwing and naptime, the cuddles and kicking… they all have to be passed through. After all, you can’t make a gold ring without a hot flame. Life has taught me a lot of that over the years. I lost a friend’s brother and a great grandfather as a young colt, three friends and two relatives in a single year in my early teens, and now during my adult life I’ve said farewell to two more elders, one a very close step-grandfather, the other being Mrs. Cake’s father. I’ve accosted and lost friends in various ways. I nearly lost my blood brother by narrowly avoiding spilling our deepest secret one year. I even had to help a cousin through several years of battling depression.
Would I change anything? Not on your life.
Everything I’ve been through has polished me to be the stallion I’m supposed to be, the husband I’m needed to be, and the father I’m going to be when it comes time to teach my young ones. I plan on teaching them that life isn’t fair, and that they have to fight to get what they want. They also need to learn that elementary school may not be giving them a fair shake in the name of “keeping them with their friends”. I’ve heard rumours lately that a few parents are whining about their kids being kept back because they didn’t do their work and it will leave them behind their friends. Because of this complaint, the schools are weighing options to keep the class together.
I frown at that thought, and I swear my daughter frowns with me.
A kid that puts the effort in should pass, and the kid that doesn’t should fail. It isn’t a “right” to stay with your friends. You have to work for it. You get what you put into life, nothing more, nothing less. After all, the government is funded by the working stiff, and if there are too many people draining money from my pocket because they don’t think they should work because it “isn’t fair”, then scrap the damn welfare programs and all this bullshit needless catering that happens so people can get back to work and actually contribute to the society they leech off of.
Ah, but I went on a tangent. I chuckle a little as I watch her twitch and roll a little.
I want her to work, and so I shall work. I shall bake my cakes and sell them to customers as long as they come through those doors. I want my children happy and prosperous, and I will show through my example what that looks like.
My longest-lasting legacy is the one I pass through my kids. That legacy is evidenced in what I say and do. If I really want to make a bold impact on the world, I will train my kids in the way they should go. That legacy, those values will outlive any business I may establish and name after myself. They will continue forward for generations after I’m gone. They will outlast even the Princesses on their thrones.
I have to play the part first. I have to lead. I have to show them what we value. Even though the mother birthed them and carries out their day-to-day discipline regularly, I am their life example. I am their faith. I am their embodiment of the One upon this planet, and it is me and my faith and beliefs they will look to emulate. What I say and do will destroy and build them in equal measure. I hold the key, and if I leave, faith dies.
Solemnly, I gaze over the whole room at my children. I look at my daughter. I look at my son. I think about the path I want them to take.
And I smile.
This is going to be an amazing journey.
