Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

The winter holidays are upon us. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I am thrilled; my daughter is arriving with her partner, who we will get to meet for the first time. I’ve been looking forward to this moment. No, not looking forward to meeting him, but to pretending to be the tough, overly protective, no-one-is-worthy-of-my-daughter kind of dad. But, I have a feeling that act will last only so long, and I’ll quickly be laughing it up with the person of her dreams.

When Anastasia was little, she and I drove from Michigan to Vermont. As we approached Mohawk Valley on I-90 through upstate New York, a ginormous thunderstrike pierced the sky. Steel gray clouds and lightning made the drive fearsome. In her sweet, nine-year old voice, she said, Dad, I’m scared. I told her a storm was merely passing over; that we would survive. Then, another heart-rattling blast thundered down. She started to cry; heavy rain pelted the car. I couldn’t see ahead. I put on my hazards and slowed down.

Through tears, Anastasia said, we are supposed to turn off everything and be still, daddy. I told her that’s only when we are home. A minute later, I pulled beneath an overpass and stopped the car. At first, we listened to rain sloshing the road as cars passed by, then I started to sing Old McDonald, a favorite from her childhood. It made her giggle. Then, we sang together: Miss Mary Mack, then Frere Jacque, then Sur le Pont d'Avignon. Then, I sang a song she had never heard before — Pole Pole, a children’s call-and-response tune in Swahili meaning “Go slow. Go slow.” I had her join in. Our voices together rose above our fears. About a half-hour later, we were driving again with the sunshine blindingly blazing through the windshield and our hearts full.

I want someone in my daughter’s life who will sing to her when she is most full of doubts and uncertainties, when storms inevitably arrive.

Today’s poem gorgeously anticipates the day ahead when our children will pursue their own loves, and what magic we might model for them.

Two Shadows
by Maurice Manning

The little one belongs to her
and the taller one is mine, though I doubt 
she knows the shadows walking hand
in hand ahead of us in the field
are ours. If I walk behind her, mine,
without a word, overshadows 
all of hers, a magic I think she likes.
And when I walk at her side again,
the two of us return, a giant
and his long-legged little helper,
who’s new enough to walking still
she manages a wobble or swings
a foot in picking the place to put it.
None of this beautiful, secret love
will last. Other shadows will come
along, and she’ll see her own one day
apart from mine. But before those fates
arrive, I’m going to stretch my arms,
and tipping and twirling, I’ll show her how
to turn her shadow into a bird
and rest it softly in the tree,
and afterward, when she sees a shadow, 
perhaps she’ll think of birds or me.

“Two Shadows” by Maurice Manning from SNAKEDOCTOR © 2023 Maurice Manning. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.