Time Flies, Always

I woke up this morning next to my daughter. This little bundle of mushy cuteness, exuding her 6-month sounds and movements and smiles, was just laying there staring into my crusted eyes. I smiled with pride and joy, knowing that she was a part of me. How crazy of a feeling is that? It's a simple case of human genetics, but to me, it's a marvel and a wonder that the universe gave me this creature that is me, but isn't. I think about all of this when she wails inconsolably for 40 minutes straight and no amount of farting noises or cross eyed grins or 'I Love You's' please her like they normally do. This was how it went last night, hence her sleeping in my bed.

It's already March and I still am clueless in this world. I remember New Years Eve like it was yesterday and now, the maple sugaring is starting in my home state. I've been on a few adventures since moving to Los Angeles, bouncing from this bar to that bar, this girl to that girl.
              "Yes, I have a 6 month old daughter. Can I buy you a drink?"

I haven't yet found my place in this town, not like the way I nestled in perfectly to my favorite haunts in New York. I've grown weary from trying to compare the two towns, as they are completely different beasts with completely different tendencies and desires. So now I let myself drift through this vast expanse of a city, a mental image of its map and my lonely bus routes projected against the inside of my forehead.

As I wrap my head around my lot in life, I'm struck with a thought of this little girl, my little girl, growing up and asking me why I moved from New York. Because surely, I will speak wistfully of it to her and she will see the twinkle in my eye and hear the weight of my sigh.
                "Because of you, little one. People come from all over the world to New York because it represents something bigger, more beautiful than their current life. Once upon a time, that's how it was for me, craning my neck at the skyscrapers, simply aghast at the City's magnificence. But then a little gorgeous angel sauntered into my world, eyes shut from months of darkness, vocal cords bellowing a Whitman "Yawp" and my siren became not the steel jungle with its yellow cars and pounding trains, but you. In an unknown world on the other side of the country laid a part of me, calling me and drawing me from what I once knew because now, she was all I knew. The rest, of course, is history and though New York sits squarely at the head of the table of my memories, I don't regret this for one milli-second."

Then of course she'll say "You could have just said because of me" and I'll go on some pretentious rant about the power of words and how sometimes poetry is the only means to blah blah blah. With the way time moves now, it seems I may wake up tomorrow morning and this day will come, her feet jumping up and down on my bed telling me it's time for cartoons. But for now, it's March(!) and she is curled up a few feet from me unaware of how crazy everything is. So until I find a clue in this world, I know I have that to look forward to, which is really all I want from Los Angeles, anyway.