A Birthday Gift

 

October 5, 2020

 Greetings from this new life,

 Remember the moments your life changed?  When you got that phone call, or you met your soul’s mate, or discovered your purpose, the doctor gave you the news, or you made that choice? 

 Or your daughter was born.  Your first child, the person who would show you what you were missing in your ‘complete’ life, and the next moment showed you again.

 Katherine came into our lives this day, three decades ago.  On each day between this and that, she has moved into the world, filled with joy and curiosity and love, and with each person she touched, she changed their lives.

 I was early on the list, on that frantic day she took her first breath, with her baby cheeks, that shock of dark hair, her skin glowing pink, as if the color inside her could not be contained.  When she was born, we were in awe of her, overwhelmed with the new responsibility.  She was completely dependent on us, so fragile, so tiny.  We stopped three times on the way home from the hospital to make sure she was surviving in the back seat. 

 I had no idea what to expect of her, or the world, thirty years ago.  I didn’t see that every day she was growing a fraction more independent, learning, gaining strength, becoming the significant young woman she is today.   It is a milestone birthday, the exchange of one decade for another, where she is already across the threshold of being grown up.  Career, marriage, and her own life-changing, first born daughter, Ila.

 Katherine has embraced this life, sought what is beautiful, the challenging, the richness, the lessons.  She has also found her place, how she matters.  She has become someone who would change the world.

 There are images from these years that rise up this morning.   When I trimmed her tiny infant fingernail and snipped into her skin, and for an eternal, heartbreaking moment, she looked into my eyes with such disbelief, and burst into tears.  Watching her first awkward steps around the furniture. Running across our yard, her long hair streaming behind her.  Roaring down the sidewalk on her little bicycle, all the way to the forbidden corner, never looking back.

 A lifetime of firsts, of accomplishments, of successes and setbacks.  I walked next to her into the halls of her elementary school, let go of her hand and watched her become one of the sea of little learners.  I rode next to her on her first bicycle tour to Ludington.  I ran next to her in her first marathon, listened to the thoughts that rose up in that challenging last half.  I walked next to her as she moved down the aisle to marry Tim.

Katherine is kind, patient, expresses a sense of empathy in her choices, her words, her actions.  I see how she believes through her relationships with others.  Her brothers, her friends, her husband, her daughter.  She is devoted, loyal, caring, and she gives of herself in every connection. 

 Within her peaceful demeanor is a powerful, spirited  sense of adventure.  Not many years back she rode her bicycle across the United States, living out her resilience, her determination.  From that adventure she knitted herself to Tim, and together they have explored the world from Costa Rica to Iceland, from tiny two-lane roads to bustling cities.  It is a colorful, rich, luscious life they have crafted.

 Katherine asks good questions, to discover about others, but also to cause them to discover themselves.  She has a way of expressing opinions, even difficult ones, that somehow sound like “Here is this piece of art I created.  What do you think of it?”  I don’t do it justice here, except that somehow she makes her thinking known and respected without a scintilla of ego.  It allows others to understand her without feeling she is trying to make her way, their way.

 She is in the company of women, including her own daughter, if I’m any judge, who exemplify integrity, purpose, strength.  Katherine Riley Smith, a woman of substance and of meaningful direction.  I’m grateful to call her my friend, and Daughter.

 When I say ‘Daughter’ it is not a claim on her, nor am I taking credit for her, or simply assigning a genealogical definition.  When I say ‘Daughter’ I am saying ‘Gift’.  It is a gift she gave me when she was born.

 Thomas Fuller, a theologian from another time, said something I admired.  He described Light as ‘God’s eldest daughter.’  I know little else about him but I’m grateful for this phrase.  Katherine is my eldest daughter, God’s eldest daughter; she is Light.

 My Daughter is a gift to the world, in some ways you would notice, in others you won’t know about but matter all the same.  She is a Light to her family and friends, to the people she meets, and to all those she changes through the life she has chosen.  On her first day, and on this birthday, she is a gift to us all.  We should celebrate.

  

Hope this finds you reflecting her light,

 

David

 

Copyright © 2020 David Smith