"Butterfly Kisses": Choking Up All Over Again

The song has always had a pull on me, but it became even more meaningful with the birth of my daughter Kimi in 2000. "Butterfly Kisses," by Christian artist Bob Carlisle, is the song of a father watching his daughter grow up, and I can't hear it without crying, making it yet another good thing that I'm not an on-stage performer.

Maybe it's the memories that are, and the visions that are coming, that get to me. The little seven-year-old girl that's with me now how her imaginary friends, her love of all things purple and pink, the ponytails (that is, when she deigns to let someone do her hair) and all. But I know it's coming.

That day is coming when that cell phone is going to be plastered to her ear, or in her hands, texting her friends, all the "OMG's" and whatnot. There's going to be a time when she's not going to want that hug from her old man, and that's when the lyric, "You know I love you, Daddy, but if you don't mind, I'm only gonna kiss you on the cheek this time," is going to ring through my suddenly empty head like the bells of a cathedral.

And then the day, when I'm not cleaning the shotgun on the porch to scare off those I don't deem worthy of my angel, when one of them appears to be less slimy than the other hormone experiments (if it's possible, that is), she's going to find someone she loves, and that last stanza will come, where "she'll change her name today," and there I'll be, at the end of the aisle, in front of God, family, and friends, and give her away. Here's where I choke up, and, indeed, am choking up now.

It makes me cherish our times now, when I'm still the big man in her life. And if that isn't significant, then I don't know what is.