100 Words Per Mile: On Inheritance
I have my social allergies. My wife has her gifts. What will my daughter get?
November 30, 2021
10.00 miles
1:33:45
Bill stopped by for another lunchtime run today. We have a race coming up (the half marathon for me, the full for him) and we started talking about a full marathon coming up in February. It’s a bit of a wrinkle in his schedule, but he said if I wanted to do it, he would do it with me.
The full marathon I want to run would be in February, giving me about two months to train and prepare for it. I’m already feeling good about running the half in a couple weeks, but the question becomes: can I double that in just sixty days?
I’m not sure I can, but I told Bill I was in.
My daughter’s neck strength has already grown tremendously. She can’t quite hold her head up by herself, but she has brief moments of control here and there. My wife doesn’t like it too much when I give our little girl opportunities to try things out—and maybe she’s right. I don’t want to be the dad who pushes my kid too hard, but it’s hard not to feel a little validated when she does things that feel extraordinary for her age.
One of the new developments that’s been confirmed by a recent visit with the pediatrician is that my daughter has a strawberry birthmark, just like her mother. By strawberry birthmark, I mean a hemangioma—a cluster of extra blood vessels that form what looks like a strawberry on her skin. My wife’s appeared and grew along her ribcage on the right side of her body. My daughter’s is in the same place on the left. Not only that, but my daughter may have a second hemangioma on her back!
Supposedly there isn’t any evidence to suggest they are genetic, so it’s really just a lovely coincidence. My wife’s strawberry has since faded since she was younger, leaving behind a small patch of skin that looks lightly scarred. I’m really attracted to it, in a “this is uniquely you” kind of thing about her. Sometimes, like during the colder months, I forget about it. Or if our showers have been mostly separate—like now because we need eyes on the baby—the memory of the strawberry will fade until I see it again. Then, when I do, I feel joy.
