Tracy and Molly in
Just What He Sees

I remember like it was yesterday - lying on my back, the grass picky and sticking to the damp skin of my neck.  The sky close enough to touch. Summer was almost over and Daddy was set to go away again. He tells me his work is important for the country. I believe him but sometimes I wondered why the Navy thought they needed him more than we did.

“You know, we might be the only ones in the whole world looking up together in that big somewhere out there. What do you see?” His words break my wanderings and I turn my head to the sound of his voice. He’s lying next to me with the same grass sticking to his neck. The same sky close enough to touch.

 “I see clouds, Daddy.”

“Clouds… Anyone can see clouds. I see an elephant standing right over there. Sometimes you have to see with your heart not just your eyes.” I blink and squint to see what he sees. He takes his finger and draws an imaginary line in the air around a lofty puff of clouds marching forward. And then I see! An elephant.

You might wonder how my dad and clouds have anything to do with Tracy and Molly and this painting, but they do.  Partly, because it makes me think of the way Tracy looks at Molly - the way he sees with his heart not just his eyes.  I guess I was hoping to see what he sees.  “I never had a child, but I can guarantee you the feeling I had was the same as a dad that picks up his newborn child for the first time. Has to be. It was an authentic moment. It was a thankful and emotional moment. It was a lot of things. That picture really represents the beginning of a very long road that Molly and I would be traveling together. The bond between us would deepen. All our lives pass in real, normal time but when you look back it seems fast. And it seems like the life (time) we had sped along - the days, the weeks, the months. I looked back on [Molly’s] life with me and it was like a flash. I was thinking what happened?! Molly taught me to live in the present moment and to enjoy it. [She] changed my life in many ways… many of which I am just realizing.”

Daddy left on deployment the following week. It would be three months before I saw him again. Time is an incredible thing really. Those days and weeks just dragged into months until he was home again. Looking back now, it seems like only yesterday but a lifetime ago, Daddy and I lying on the grass. The sky close enough to touch. I remind him still today of that elephant in the clouds and how I found my way back to that place on the grass so many times during his deployment. I guess a part of me was hoping we were the only ones in the whole world looking up together in that big somewhere out there.

I guess I was hoping to see what he sees…

©Daune Sheri
September 13, 2021