The Sound of Her Wings

It was inevitable that I would use this blog to talk about her sooner or later, and let me preface the whole thing by admittin that I know I'm batshit looney. This subject, usually kept to myself, came up in an offhand way yesterday and she's been on my mind since. Let's be honest, she's on my mind a lot, somewhere in the background, and more frequently when I sleep, but I almost never talk about her with anyone else. A small handful know of her, and even among that group I'm reluctant to talk about this, maybe because I think it makes people uncomfortable, maybe because it's my own personal thing that I like to keep to myself. The book I'm working on, however, is just as much for her as it is for her mother. When it's finally done I hope some of the ghosts haunting me will be exorcised, but I know I won't forget either one of them, and I have no intention of trying.

It's funny how I meet girls who are convinced they need to back away because they'll hurt me. I may wear my heart on my sleeve sometimes, and that does make me vulnerable, but I'm harder to actually hurt than I probably seem to be to most observers. I've already survived the three or four worst things that I'll probably ever be faced with, and just what do they really think they can do to me that'll make me feel worse than those things have? I haven't had a bad life. I haven't had to deal with the horrible things that people I know have had to deal with. I'm not comparing myself to them. But really, come on.

I know what she looks like. I knew, because I saw her, even before she had a name. Her name came much later. It had to wait until I could deal with the concept. First, I had to wake up. Thanks to Shannon, I did. Then I had to start to deal with how I felt about it, which I had never done. I'd dealt with the feelings towards her mother to some degree, but never fully. Her I never dealt with at all. But I'd seen her, and I knew what her voice sounded like, and I decided she needed to have a name. Coming up with just the right one took me around two hours of brainstorming in a hospital waiting room while Dan was waiting for his wife to give birth. I was alone there with my thoughts and started working it out. I don't know if this makes me crazy. I don't care. She deserved a name.

My little girl needed a name.