Today, June 24th, is a very special day: it is my daughters' fourth birthday.
Four is an interesting age; it is a number well over the fragility and exposed helplessness of infancy, and yet, well under the layered mysteries and baited breaths that await; at four years of age, we are kings and queens of Oz.
At four, we have real conversations about real things that flourish with imagination. We assert ourselves inappropriately and ostentatiously: no one seems to pay much notice; people smile and think such improprieties and misappropriations are endearing, cute and expected. We may remember things silly and profound at four; we may discover our first tastes of exhilaration, fear, bravado, heartbreak. We may even be the very person that we will always be: this is what is so cool.
At four, words like "hate" and "hell" and "death" and all of "the swears" are met with unsure footing and innocence and trepidation, as "they are not nice and "not nice" things remain foreign and indecipherable and far away in legend fairy tales. Circumspection and self-consciousness and muddied slates are galaxies beyond.
Everybody loves you, when you are four years of age.
Happy Birthday, girls.
