April 24, 2002

Daddy, I NEED You

My daughter is missing her daddy, my husband, more and more as the days pass slowly by. Playing in Hong Kong for three months, he's been gone for two weeks, and it seems a year. Tonight our daughter wept in her room, "Daddy, I *need* you," and it nearly broke my heart, for me as much as her. I remember crying the same words at nearly her same age, but I knew that my daddy wasn't coming back.

It's the needing that socks me in the gut. That desparate helpless needing, unable to manifest that person you want so badly to see and touch, the one single solitary thing that can make it all better, and I mean *all* better. But you can't form them from the air around you. You know you can't, and the knowing feeds the cycle of want, making it even more powerful as time ticks by. Tick tock, tick tock tick tock.

Daddy, we miss you.