New Life: With My Daughter __top__

A new life with a daughter is also a reckoning with time. I watch her sleep and see how quickly she grows, how the newborn onesies give way to toddler pajamas. I am suddenly aware of my own mortality in a way I never was before. But this awareness is not morbid; it is clarifying. Every moment with her feels borrowed, precious, fleeting. I find myself slowing down, not out of exhaustion, but out of a desperate desire to memorize the details: the way she says "again" when I tickle her, the dimple that appears only when she laughs, the fierce way she grips my finger when we cross the street.