Without her; through her

First, a deep, sincere thanks to all of you who helped to make Cleo's fourth birthday so rich and generous. On Sunday, we gathered with friends as a summer storm took shape outside, and enjoyed pizza, a lively game of pass-the-parcel, and a rainbow comprised of cupcakes; yesterday, Cleo opened a package full of new clothes for her various dolls; and this morning, she awoke to a range of colorful cards and strawberries with powdered sugar - and, I gather, there's still more to come this evening.

But I can only surmise, because I'm now sitting at the Starbucks in Dulles, about to check in for a flight to Venice, and thus playing the part of the absent dad on the road. In fact, I'll be cast in that role for the next ten days, as L. and her parents tend to Cleo and life in B'more, while I work with a MICA study abroad course. of course, given that the destination's Venice, I'm not asking for sympathy. But, regardless, I can already feel myself missing her little footfalls, and her enthusiastic proclamations - which have recently concerned, most frequently, Rapunzel, but have also encompassed the habits of slugs and Cleo's allegedly remarkable height. I miss, too, the alternative to those proclamations: that is, her occasionally openly modest queries. 'Dad' she has said several times since our visit to Gettysburg, 'tell me about the war.' And remembering that reminds me, too, that we've actually spent a lot of good time together of late: from afternoons at the swimming pool to muddy efforts at gardening (or garden-inflected efforts at muddening?), June's been good to us.

But perhaps the best pallative to missing her occurred a few minutes ago, when I was scrolling through my phone's stored images, looking for the above photo. To my surprise, there were more than 200 photos on file: a fact that seemed inexplicable, until I remembered that I'd given her the phone for a few minutes while driving home on a recent afternoon. In those minutes - 6? 8? - she'd managed to shoot a whole suite of images: views of the world outside; studies of her legs; blurred abstractions. And then, too, this rather lovely composition:

And so suddenly, as I finish my latte and ready to approach the gate, I'm not quite alone. Even as I set out to see a part of the world without her, for the next week, I learn to see the world through her.