Dylan Stafford

Jackson’s four and a half years old exactly today, October 25, 2011. I’ve got an important meeting in three hours, but I’m still in my PJs, sipping my coffee and failing at trying to not let work creep into my home life. I’m failing because I’ve already brainstormed four or five different scenarios of how to manage the meeting, already slain dragons and saved fair maidens in my mind.

My son’s the tallest “Penguin” in his daycare class. He outgrows clothes quickly and last week Mommy unveiled a new red jacket for Fall.

His previous jacket was baby blue and had dark blue stripes on the sleeves. He’d worn the blue jacket for a surprisingly long time; Mommy must have bought the blue jacket extra-large to get such a long life from it. It had a hood and Jackson looked baby-ish wearing it, like a toddler who still teeters left and right as much as goes straight forward when he walks.

But last week, when I was grabbing my coffee and my lunch and loading the car, Marisa brought Jackson out of his room sporting his new red jacket, a very bright red with white stripes down the sleeves. Gone is the hood and instead there’s a collar, very big-man-on-campus looking.

We exchanged our kisses in the driveway, me trying to be present while that day’s work challenges were similarly already bouncing around in my brain. Mommy played a game of peek-a-boo outside Jackson’s car window; the game they’ve been playing each morning for years.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure he’d latched his car seat—another marker of his growth, him latching his car seat himself—and there in the seat where my toddler sat was this new child, this pre-K young boy in his new red jacket.

“Let’s go Dad. Will you tell me a story? I want a Star Wars story. Remember, there are no witches or dinosaurs in a Star Wars story.”

Daddy-hood is my life now. I’m never “not” a father. Jackson is growing every day, week and month. There are the outward signs as his body gets bigger, the new vocabulary, the questions he asks and observations he makes. There are the pangs of melancholy-wow that grab at my stomach, these little moments each week as I witness a little life evolving. I still writing, still trying to catch a fleeting flicker, in between all the silly dragons.