Your first Birthday.

Dear Leila,

Yesterday you turned one. I spent the whole day thinking about what I was doing exactly a year before. Counting down the minutes until 10pm. The exact time you were born. The tenth hour of the tenth day of the second month of the year 2010. You've turned into such a magical little person Leila, I am so happy you are my daughter.

Your dad and I took you out for pasta last night. It's your favourite food. You sat there slurping up noodles with an air of contentment on your face. Everyone kept commenting on what a happy baby you are. You charmed an old couple and a couple with a sleeping six month old,and every server in the place.

This has been a hard year in a lot of ways Leila. Your dad and I are no longer together. We just aren't good that way. But that doesn't mean that we're not going to take you out for dinner every year on your birthday. That doesn't mean we're not going to go to every single silly school thing you ever do. Together. Because we're your parents, and we love you. Because your dad let me listen to the same two Neil Young albums over and over and over again for twenty hours while I was in labour (I think he slipped Paul Simon in there once). Because you're the best thing both of us has ever done.

I was sacred of you at first. Scared of having a daughter, of raising a woman. But the second night you were alive I was lying in bed after your uncle Chris and auntie Chelso had gone home, and you lifted your head up off my chest and looked at me with these hilarious crossed eyes and my heart broke and melted into a thousand pieces. And I still haven't found all of them. I'm still picking them up every time you do something new and sweet. Every time you play peek-a-boo with me. Every time you smile and curl up in my lap with a bottle. Every time you say, "ma ma ma ma".

Love you kiddo.

Ma ma ma ma

Day One.

(Yes, that's an icepack I'm holding on my boob.)

city of ghosts

Last night I went out and had a couple of drinks with some friends. It was a nice night out so my friend and I decided to walk home, but it seemed like every street I took lead me further into the past, closer the ghosts of who I was. Even two blocks from my house I heard my name being called and turned around and was face to face with someone I hadn't seen since I was seventeen and going to punk rock shows at Seylynn Hall. And I didn't want to be recognized, didn't want to be reminded. I want to walk to the park with my daughter and not remember that once I sat on those same swings waiting for a boy.

I know it's impractical to pick up and move your life because you have a child, but still. There's part of me that doesn't want to explain that that is who I am now, I just want to be it.