Time for Amanda

Amanda, while you grew up in Copenhagen I was busy living wherever life seduced my rootless ego. I began to see these opportunistic wanderings in a new light after I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Morrie was right, when he said (on a Tuesday) that everyone knows they will die but nobody believes it. More than that, I realized, is if you don't accept it, you can't open your eyes to what you need to see. You, my daughter, thankfully have your health and your youth. Your arc of time...
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Amanda, while you grew up in Copenhagen I was busy living wherever life seduced my rootless ego. I began to see these opportunistic wanderings in a new light after I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Morrie was right, when he said (on a Tuesday) that everyone knows they will die but nobody believes it. More than that, I realized, is if you don't accept it, you can't open your eyes to what you need to see. You, my daughter, thankfully have your health and your youth. Your arc of time bends beyond the horizon. Mine dips ever closer. Too early for white flowers though, so let's enjoy the time we still have together.As I walk my last stretch of road, I reflect on those many Sundays in Old Europe that we spent apart. And also the precious time we spent together: on the ski slopes, picking prized blueberries and nasty raspberries, exploring micro-cafes in Copenhagen, shopping in New York, hanging out at Penn in Philadelphia, and wandering the streets of Barcelona, Milano, Amsterdam, Paris, Tivoli, and the sandy beaches of Rörvig. All our separations were painful but my biggest joy was reuniting with you, picking you up from school, hanging out at home, and sharing the simple laughs of Friends and the stories of How I met your mother. I have a lot more to say to you. Most of all, I want to share the insights I came upon when I was surrounded by darkness, wandering about in my shadow(s) without a doubt to whom I'd turn my thoughts and wishes. I have routinely found myself in exotic places in my travels, but it's always the observation of ordinary people doing ordinary things that most touches me; everyday events in everyday places. Normality - la vie quotidienne - is a moon-like magnet. Inexorably it pulls us into low ebb and high tide. We love to despise it, this relentless wave-break of repetition. Yet it will be life's banal repetitions that I regret leaving: the ordinary not the extraordinary. I will miss the cooking, the eating, parking, shopping, cleaning, reading, shouting, hugging, the waking up together, for sure. When I am gone to the great coffee bar in the sky, these reassuring repetitions will still be yours: Carpe every diem dear!This book is a lamp post; a paternal beacon that I hope will continue to shine light when I fade out. These poems of experiences and thoughts, blended like café and lait, are my ode to the ordinary, and my gift to you on the occasion of your 18th birthday.