Letters to Marge (Chapter 6): Everything in Due Time, and Money Can’t Buy Everything

My Dear Marge...

So I’ve mentioned the wedding of the Garcias. We had to bring you along since your nanny was just on her way back from Baguio after a round of chicken pox. So yeah, it was technically your first formal event.

But that’s not the highlight of this entry.

The highlight was when I was carrying you around, and we stopped at a corner where some toddlers were running around and playing. You were craning and spinning your head about, looking at the kids playing, and you were smiling at them, while cheerfully gurgling. When I put you down, you were happily flapping your arms the way you do whenever you were happy or excited, or both. You were also leaning in various directions and stomped your feet a bit, the way you do when you move in your walker.

I so wanted to see you running around and playing with the children. If only I could buy a couple of years to make you old enough to walk, run and play about. But this time, your grandmother’s money can’t do a thing. Sooner or later, I see it anyways. So you, your mother and I are just going to have to be a wee bit more patient.

Which brings me to this entry’s two lessons:
1. EVERYTHING IN DUE TIME…
2. MONEY CAN’T BUY EVERYTHING…

Lesson Number One above will be extremely applicable to you because you’re a girl. And hopefully, in the future, when your hormones start running about and working themselves up, you will know that making love should also be done in due time.
Like that time when you wanted to run about, I could have let you go and crawl around. But that would’ve hurt you, and you weren’t ready for it at all. So I held on to you while you stood smiling and giggling as things went on. I didn’t let you go.

But one day I’ll have to.

One day, I’ll have to start letting you go and watch you play about. Standing just a few steps away to pick you up, in case you fall. Please know that I always will. But I also hope you will know within yourself when the time is right for certain things, so that when you fall, you won’t fall so hard that you can’t pick yourself up.

But I will always be a few feet away in case you do.

As for Lesson Number Two, the Beatles have a number one song about what money can’t buy. But some things like the right time, an additional two years, along with brain and muscle development, and such are things beyond my control to give to you. Toys R’ Us won’t mean jack this time.

When you get older, and realize thankfully that you will grow into a family of relatively comfortable affluence, you may occasionally feel invincible. It’s quite heady, frankly. I sometimes find myself defiantly looking at some things other children have, thinking that should you eventually want those things, I can buy them for you.

But that night, I couldn’t buy you two year old legs that can run about and play.

So I defer back to Lesson Number One. Hopefully, you will, too.

Catch you later…

Love,

Dad