I've just seen a face......

"I just saw a face"

.....Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
And I'd have never been aware.
But as it is I'll dream of her.....

The words of Lennon & McCartney rang in my head yesterday morning just after 9am.  I was walking out of my office, just like any other day, when someone stopped me in the hall and asked me....well....um....asked me if I knew where the former Mrs Me # 1 worked.  And I looked up to point to my office and......
I just saw a face.
Except it wasn't just any face.....it was a face that I knew all too well.  It was a face that I had burned into my subconscious.  It had been burned into my memory for the last 20 years.  It was....the face of a young woman who had been my daughter.
A long time ago, in a place seemingly very far away.  And as I looked at her, in what to her was a glance but to me was like a slow motion series of snapshots being taken. 
(What did her smile look like?)
(Was her hair the same color I remembered?)
(She's tall.  Is that from her mother or her father?)
(Her eyes.  I remember those eyes.)
I found myself fumbling for an answer to her question, and then motioned to the door to our office (MY office).
"Yeah, she's in that office over there."

And she began to walk away, towards the door that I had pointed too.  Walk away again...out of my life.  And as she did, I found myself wondering....wondering why I hadn't done what I had wanted to do for so long.....to tell her who I was.  Tell her what she had meant to me....not just a long time ago, but for the whole of the last 20 years....since the day she had been born.  I was there ya know.  Oh, I'm sure HER MOTHER would just soon forget that little detail, but I was.  I was the one who was waiting there when she came out of the delivery room (she had wanted me in there with her but her mother---now there's a story for another time, her mother...oh boy---didn't want me to go in with her.  But I was the one who had looked down at that little face and just gazed with wonder at what had happened.  And the conversation with the delivery nurse was a classic.
"You the husband?"
"Nope.  Wow, honey....you did a great job!  She's beautiful!"
"Uh, you the father then?"
"Nope.  Man oh man....she's gorgeous!"
"Well if your not the husband and your not the father....who are you?"
"The boyfriend."
"Okay, I admit it.  That's a new one on me."

And so she walked away.  And I felt all those bad feelings come back again.  Not towards her of course.  She didn't even know who I was.  I'm sure to her, I was just some guy in a hallway giving her directions.  I wasn't the guy who had been there with her on Sunday mornings when she woke up in her crib with a smile on her face.
Some people asked me why I hadn't told her who I was.  Why?  What would be the point?  A decision had been made, a long long time ago, by someone else (guess who sports fans) that this beautiful young girl would no longer be regarded as my.....anything.  Certainly not my daughter.  Not anything.  I had no ground to stand on I suppose.  So I walked away.   I wish I hadn't, not from her at least, but I did.
And so for almost 20 years....there's been this hole there.  Right in my lower chest.
Inside.  A hole that was all about.....what would she be like if I was still there?  How would she be different?  How would I be different?  Would she have been happier?
Would I have been?  Would I have been the one to hear about her first boyfriend?
Would I have heard about all those silly little things that seemingly to mean anything, and yet mean EVERYTHING?  But I'll never know....not about her.
But sometimes....sometimes life offers you a 2nd chance.  And one day, about 5 1/2 years ago, I met someone....and another little girl came into my life.  One that was looking for a daddy.  And one day, I told her about that little girl from so long ago, and how maybe I had messed up somewhere and how that's why I had lost her....and then I had gotten a 2nd chance with her and how I didn't want to blow it.
Not again.  Not this time.  And she told me she didn't think I would.  So now, I have my 2nd chance.  I love my daughter so much.  I call her my little pisspot, cuz that's sorta what she is.  She can be full of piss and vinegar when she wants to be....and turn on a dime and be sugar and spice.  Funny how that works, huh?  People tell me that she looks like me.  That she looks as though she really could be mine.  And if they only knew how much of a compliment that is to me.  Because I remember my friends telling me the same thing.....a long time ago.  And maybe that's why I had that face...that face...so etched in my memory.  Or maybe its the photo that hangs on her mothers desk.  The one that seems to look out at me like a shadow, never seemingly really there....like a ghost.  And I wonder if that hole....in its entirety...can ever really be filled.  Someone told me that I'm like a parent that gave their child up for adoption and wondered what ever happened to it.  My problem is....I know what happened to her...and I see her picture everyday.
And on this day....that picture, for just a brief fleeting moment...came to life.
Because you see......

I've just seen a face..........

Later,
jeff