If You Run Out of Words …

This Father’s Day, my daughter reminded me that there is no higher gift, than the gift of the words we give to our children.

It’s not about having the right words; it’s simply having words when your children need to hear them.

That insight is the gift my daughter gave to me today.

My wife and I are empty-nesters — our youngest daughter left home a year-and-a-half ago to start her own life with her girlfriend in Boulder, Colorado.

I remember crying the night before her plane left, sure that I had failed in so many ways.

I also cried because my little girl was leaving home. Daddies and daughters share a special bond, one I thought I understood when she was growing up. But in truth, it’s one that I’m just now coming to understand.

It’s not about having the right words; it’s simply having words when your children need to hear them.

And I cried because of everything that I would miss — the most profound involving books and words.

From her birth, Katie and I bonded over words. Whether it was dancing together in the evenings to John Lennon’s Double Fantasy album just days after she came home, her first forays into writing poetry in elementary school, or simply talking about the interesting books we were reading, words brought our relationship to life.

Like the day at Barnes & Noble, while strolling through the poetry section, when my eyes fell upon The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. I pulled it down and began reading. Katie, then no more than 10, came and sat next to me and asked me to read, and explain, what I was absorbing.

I don’t recall the poem we discussed that day; I do recall how with each passing word we drew closer.

We had similar experiences with Edgar Allen Poe, and the wonderful magic spun by Robert Frost.

But on the morning that she left, I was afraid that all I’d given her, really, were words.

Words that don’t pay bills, or put food on the table, or help us out when distance and time take a toll on our emotions.

As it turns out, she reminded me, words were more than enough. Words shared over sodas, during walks in the park, and through long conversations about the little things that happened over the course of the day. Words not bound by screens and texts and social media posts, but unbounded by face-to-face exchanges.

I know that now, this Father’s Day 2024, thanks to a book, and some words, she gave me.

“This book reminded me of how you never ran out of words,” my daughter wrote, “for all the questions and anxieties I had growing up. Thank you for always easing my fears.”

The book — If You Ran Out of Wordsby Felicita Sala — is a discussion between a father and his daughter, who worries that her father will run out of words, and his assurances to her that no matter what happens, he will do whatever is necessary to ensure his words would always be there.

“So you won’t EVER run out of words for me?” the daughter asks in the book’s closing pages.

“Never.” her father said. “Especially not these three …”

This Father’s Day, my daughter reminded me that the words I gave to her mattered more than any material gifts I could provide.

Our words, it seems, are the greatest gifts we can give. Because they can only be delivered when we are fully present with our children.

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