Me: Yes, nighly-jettisoned blossom of the Toner gene tree?
Sonya: How much longer till I step into the light of day?
Me: Like two more months now, kid. Hang in there. We're all impatient.
Sonya: Are you ready?
Me: Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha!
Sonya: . . .
Me: Oh, were you—were you serious? No, I'm not ready. Good Lord, no.
Sonya: There's not that much time left, Pop. How long till you're ready?
Me: Prob'ly about eighteen years? Sometimes the Big Guy just throws you in at the deep end, you know. I wasn't ready to be born when it was my turn.
Sonya: But you're a grown-up now.
Me: Well, I tell you what. It struck me recently that I am now older than my father was when I was born. And now that I'm groping my way through adult life constantly asking myself "Okay, what would an adult do in this situation?", I have a brand new perspective on what the average day must have felt like for Dad back then. Five'll getcha ten he spent a lot of time asking himself what his father would've done, and his father asked the same question before him.
Sonya: No bet.
Me: Clever girl. I think in the end, we become what we pretend to be; I hope to God if I keep trying to do what a good father would do, eventually I'll become one for real.
Sonya: Is that how you're preemptively justifying your interrogation of all my future boyfriends?
Me: Hellz yeah it is.
"Last chance, dirtbag. Where's the kibble?"
Me: Oh honey, I will. I won't mean to, at least I pray that I'll never mean to, but I will absolutely screw up. It's the part about free will that they don't tell you: when you make mistakes, you're not ultimately the one that bears the consequence. I suspect Adam and Eve would rather have suffered in Purgatory for a trillion aeons than watch all their children pay for their sin. But we don't get that option. So when I screw up and you suffer, you and your mother and I will do what we can to fix it; but more importantly, I will beg God and trust God to find a way to make you stronger for it. In the end, that's the best I can really do.
Sonya: That is a hard outlook, old man.
Me: Turns out the great truths are rarely comforting in the short run. For me, it helps to try and look at this whole thing as less of a desperate hazard and more of a perilous adventure.
Sonya: Doesn't growing up mean giving up adventures?
Me: Oh, goodness no. It just means they get stretched out. They take way longer, and there's less moment-to-moment excitement. But the risks get bigger, and so does the grace. Dragons come fifteen years long, and they give you mortgages and ulcers—and the princesses fall asleep in your lap while you read them bedtime stories.
Sonya: That doesn't sound so bad.
Me: Nah. You remember Reepicheep? The swordsmouse from Narnia?
Sonya: Sure.
Me: Whenever something dangerous came along and the others wanted to get the hell out of there, he always said, "Let us take the adventure that Aslan sends us." That's the principle by which I'm trying to live.
Sonya: And if the adventure's more than you can handle?
Me: Handle it anyway, I guess. Jesus cursed the fig tree for not bearing fruit, even though it wasn't the season for figs. Sometimes you just have to do more than you can.
Sonya: So that's what makes you a grown-up.
Me: I think it is. We'll grow up together, you and I.
Sonya: Love you, Dad.
Me: Love you too, Magdalena Rose.
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