After today, I wanted to get closely acquainted with my pillow, ASAP. Found this note from dad on it instead. Think he is getting all melancholy and introspective in his old age. Course after I read it, I couldn’t sleep. No, I am not going write about the rest of my day, then. I am going to keep you in suspense, while I lie here, feeling sad about the whole world and the stories untold, lives and families torn apart, and how I probably should spend some more time with my dad

         As a baby, Jay was my story and my world. Everything I did was to keep her alive – and then, once that was as certain as it could be in this place, my job was to keep her happy.

 But one day, I realized that I couldn’t write her life anymore. When I knew she was consciously forming her own memories, I had become a supporting character in the chapters of her book. She was the protagonist now, not me. The world belonged to her, and I was on the periphery – playing ‘dad’. She wasn’t gonna care about the action hero – kicking butt, running the place, wooing the ladies and making the tough decisions. I was the guy who made her eat her greens.

I never got this feeling with Dep. Too busy working, providing, drinking with my buddies. I guess his mom felt it. She never talked about it, though; how scary it was, how it reinforced your mortality and their independence.

I just hope my daughter knows, as she lives ‘The Secret Life of Jay’, how much I love her, and I am always waiting in the footnotes, when she needs me in her story.