If you ever did believe

It is 12:03 AM. My daughter and I just got off the phone. This is my litmus, my balance, my gravity, my solid center. Tonight was not a very special night but it was one of those nights that no matter how old she grows to be, she will recall. She will know I was in her corner, listening, sharing, loving. This night in my life will matter. This is important.

Two writers, who also happen to be instructors of mine at the University of Baltimore read tonight - poetry. Brave, raw, new work; they have yet to render or polish or rethink or craft. They put their early work out for the students to listen, learn. That is how generous they are as instructors, as artists. My daughter, Sara went with me; no one else has heard as much of my raw work as she; no one has stood as solidly in my corner as she; no one knows all the dark and all the bright in equal measure as much. And she knows she is made of some of the same fuselage: It burns brighter in her though and gets better mileage.

I got to Sara's apartment, third floor walkup on North Calvert, guided by the Christmas lights she had hung on her balcony and divine providence had granted me parking just a half block away. I phoned from the vestibule, "You're 3F, right?" "Yes." And she buzzed me in, but I was thinking of the next time, when I can push 3F and lean and say, "Hi, this is Carlton, your doorman." and listen to her peel of laughter as the buzzer buzzes to grant me admittance.

We share a glass of wine and see her holiday decorations, how she has broken the room into functionality and social interaction. She is a master of space. If there were a crown for that, Sara would win every time.

Then she goes with me, to my place, to the space where my work and life thrives: we go to the reading at UofB of the professors I most admire for both the way they teach and for what they write. I want to be as honest as they are; I want to move the world the way they do; I want to be able to say what I see as they do.

After, we return to Sara's latest haven. She is on a path and I do not see the end. She makes me salad with chicken and ginger sesame dressing. "You have to eat something if you are drinking wine," she says. Yes.

She sits on her small couch with me, and we unveil the day and our lives.

She is so alive in this space; her balcony, the moon to the right, the stars all above, her smiling leaning over the railing waving. In her living room with ceilings twice again her height, with a bricked up fireplace, with wood floors thick with paint, with art hangings about her and her smile and dropped right shoulder as she tells me a story of her father, and I tell her of the day she took her first steps between the two of us and of our celebration and there she was, connecting everything. And then she pulls out an album and in it, a photo of me; young, young. Maybe two, three. Walking. Balancing. She had snagged it, my childhood. Precious to me, but more precious to think it was precious to her. "I show this album to my friends. I say, that's my mom." and how I don't overflow with tears is a sign of the shield we build. "Yes." I say. I mean "Thank you."

We talk on a bit but all the ride home, I carry that photo and that thought in my mind. I marry it to the memory of her peel of laughter, unchanged since she was two.