My Daughter and I: 150 days later

“Where’s the yellow onesie, babe?” I asked my wife as I searched for yet another change of clothes for my little one. She looked at me patronizingly, words dripping in sarcasm, and said, ” Your daughter outgrew your yellow onesie a couple of weeks back; It’s amazing you were able to identify it so early.”

Nothing solves your wife’s patronizing look and sarcasm as a good hug and kiss, and I, for one, have used it to wriggle out of many a tight spot. But, a long hug, a few kisses, and a smiling wife later, my thoughts returned to my little one, my daughter, the bundle of joy.

She’s growing; there’s no doubt about it. But it’s scary as hell. She doesn’t need me as much as she did before. She can hold up her neck on her own scare her mom to kingdom come as she winds around the bed and moves.

Pretty soon, she can crawl, sit and walk; she wouldn’t need me to carry her everywhere. My parents always kept telling me the correct type of parents make sure they bring up children who, as adults wouldn’t need them but still want them. It’s sound advice, but frankly in reality I don’t like it.

Is parenthood just one long-drawn-out process of letting go?

First I don’t need to hold her neck when I am holding her, now she can slowly move around without me; pretty soon she wouldn’t need me to carry her; then she will get her own room; go to school and then leave home for college.

I mean, I get it; that’s how it should be. But no one told me letting go would be so hard; watching her outgrow the yellow onesie was crazy difficult. I do not know how I will feel when the time comes for her to have her own room.

I mean that’s the right thing, isn’t it? She’s growing and you do what it takes to aid the growth and slowly over the course of the next fifteen odd years teach her how to handle the world on her own.

But, why is it that what’s right for the little so damn difficult on the parents? So damn difficult on me?

Why do I have this overwhelming sense to protect her from everything, when the right thing to do has always been to teach her how to protect herself?

Every time, I look at her; Every time she hits a new milestone; like the time she flipped over or when she slithered towards me, I feel elated but then there is also an uneasy storm brewing in the pits of my stomach. The only time I ever felt like that was on my engagement day, but now I feel it more often.

Also, she keeps changing so fast. Every time I think I understand her; something happens and something changes. Every time I learn the correct position to hold her to put her to sleep or how to get her to calm down she changes and the old ways becomes moot.

75 Billion humans have lived over the last million years along with 5000 years of civilization, you would think that we as a species would have got this childrearing thing down to list of points in a checklist.

But heck, parenting is an art where the parents have no clue and prone to screwing up. However hard I try, I do screw up.

I just hope when the time comes, my daughter, my gorgeous little cookie, forgives her dad.