Dear Kathryn,
You were a day-and-a-half old when your mother woke me to tell me you were choking. It was sometime around 3 AM and you, your mom, and I were all sharing the same hospital room. Never in my life before or since have I moved as fast as I did then. You were lying there, still, quiet when I jumped up from my cot and wrapped my hands around you, not knowing what to do but knowing that picking you up was probably a good start. And you wailed. And that was how I interrupted the first full hour of sleep I had had since you were born.
You weren't choking at all, of course. You were sleeping. The word your mom had said was "joking", not "choking," and to hear her tell it, she had said it a good fifteen minutes before I jumped up and made you cry so pitifully. It seems your mom had woken up in some discomfort from her surgery and had asked me for a cup of water, prompting me to stand up from my cot, walk to her bed, and hand her my pillow. As I shuffled back to my cot, she asked if I were joking.
Fifteen minutes later my sleep-deprived brain processed that last word. With about 85% accuracy.
Since that day, I've tried to maintain that same 85% success rate in my raising of you, my first child. Certainly some days have been better and some days have been worse, but all-in-all, I feel that I have earned a solid B on any fathering report card I might be issued.
And now today, Kathryn, you are seven years old. So far the biggest change is in your timeline for the future. For the past year, seven was everything to you. At mealtimes you'd regale us with tales of your future seven-year-old accomplishments, and now that you are there, you have already begun the monumental task of shifting those feats up one more year. Like when you're eight, you'll read that book we bought you. Or you'll swim the width of the pool. Or you'll be famous. And then we will all celebrate by jumping in our rocket-powered hovercrafts and jaunting over to your favorite restaurant where the food is cooked entirely by robots.
But seven is still really exciting to you, and when we were driving the other day, in one of those rare moments when the twins were quiet and we could speak to each other, you told me that you thought Kate or Katy might be a good name for a seven-year-old. You said it hesitatingly, nervous how I might take it, as in the past I have expressed a general dislike of diminutive nicknames. But you were about to turn seven, a wonderfully delightful seven at that, and I was determined to not fall below the 85% mark on this occasion, so I said that you could certainly call yourself anything you wished, because it was your name and you were the boss of you.
Then I asked if you thought it would be okay if I still called you Kathryn, because calling you that made me happy. For a long time you were quiet, and when you spoke, you sounded two years younger. "Daddy," you said, "I really like it when you call me Little Bear."
So Happy Birthday, Little Bear. May your next seven years be at least as good as 85% of your last seven.
Love, Daddy