Four years ago today (around this hour actually), I first saw my daughter in the form of two little feet alternately poking their way out of an incision in my wife’s abdomen. I will never forget how the OB hauled her out, cleared out her mouth and nose, the cut the cord and handed her to a nurse. The nurse still had her upside down as she moved away from the operating table, and Anna, eyes still shut, grabbed a tube as she passed by, requiring the nurse to pry it out of her little baby hand.

We were so unbelievably unready to be parents, not just because Anna was three and a half weeks early, but because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know that there is no steady state to achieve, no goal to meet, no objective to accomplish in parenting. There is no end, no resolution, and no closure with a child. There are only changes and memories and moments that you only have seconds to appreciate before they are gone forever.

All we have is the present, and yet it’s so hard to choose to live there. It’s too easy to try to live in what was or will be, but… er, wait.

It’s Anna’s birthday today. She’s four. We’re going to have a party and cake and fun. But first, I have to follow my own parental advice and go to bed so that my batteries will be all charged up and ready to go in the morning.