Friday, April 24, 2009

Ignore my sob stories.
She wore pig-tails in her hair, and a frilly white dress, and sat in a chair to pose with her tiny teeth, showing in her tiny grin. She couldn't have been older than 2, and her eyes glittered with such innocent happiness, that if she ever felt hardship she must have just forgotten it, because there wasn't a lick of fear in her eyes as she gazed at the person behind the camera.
Perhaps this person was her hero.
The one she looked up to, and ran to crawl into bed with, when she woke up in the middle of night with dreams filled with monsters she couldn't fully remember.
She had her hand clamped around the arm of the chair, afraid to fall? or just excited because it was her birthday?
Her birthday. Yes, her birthday. She was turning one, I remember now.
Presents littered the ground directly out of the camera's view, just waiting to be ripped apart by tiny fingernails upon tiny, baby-wrinkled hands.
And the second that picture was snapped, she raced toward them, stumbling a bit on her chubby legs, falling in a tangled heap, erupting in giggles.
Scooped up by arms that were oh-so-familiar, and cradled to the chest of her father.
The man behind the camera.
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I wish my father could have remained a hero.
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