One Down ...

A little over three weeks ago Mrs Acular gave birth to twin pink splodges. A week ago, they learned to walk and only yesterday they started their first day at school. 

Or so it seems.

You know how this dad feels about his Twins Aculae. They are the reason I was given eyes to see and arms to hold. To behold my little girls is the reason I live, and I regard them as the most precious gift from God. My children are my own personal Sacrament.

In what only felt like moments ago, my wife and I delivered two tiny children to a school that we didn't know in an area we didn't know among other children we didn't know either. At the moment I write this sentence, that school year ends. I am writing this to be with them in my heart before they are gathered up and taken on somewhere else, and before I collect them later.

During this week, they have returned to the nest at the end of busy days, arms full of this and that - pictures, scrapbooks and fantastical creations. Their teachers have been carefully squirelling away little way-markers of a significant development that to my eyes feels miraculous. You see, the girls who started school last year couldn't read and could barely write the first or second letter of their own name. What those teachers have given back to us are two girls who can read a simple book, write a simple sentence, ask questions about life and what it means, draw some remarkably detailed pictures, create worlds from recycling and also to annotate its meaning in full gory detail. How did that ever happen?

And so the school year ends. My children seem to have gathered some close friends already (especially if the number of parties this last year is any judge of that). They have had their moments too, when portraying none less that the devil seemed slightly light-hearted. The school year ends and two former toddlers are now functioning citizens. 

I don't care if not a soul reads this post. I am here to say how breathtakingly proud of my children I am. I don't deserve them. I don't deserve to know such wonderful little people let alone be privileged enough to be the one man alive they can call 'Daddy'. What did I ever do to deserve their love? Perhaps the bitter-sweet part of this is that as a parent we prepare our children so that bit by bit we lose them as parents. As it should be, they cast their eyes to the world in which they live so that eventually they can take flight. If Mrs A and me do our jobs right, we will one day have to let them fly away. But not yet. For now, they remain our ever present light and always our richest blessing. 

May God bless them both, always. 

With love from an unashamedly proud Dad x