I Hope You See Everything

I Hope You See Ebberthing

My daughter Sarah is three, she’s a chip off the ol block for sure. She’s a total smartass in a fine way, she’s cuter than hell, she’s got a great smile and about twenty other totally exaggerated expressions that make those around her love her. She’s what my dad would call “a pistol”. Her vocabulary is much more advanced than her older sister Hannah’s was at her age, but Hannah could speak better at her age. She says the most bizarre things at times. When she poops she wants me to look at it, so she yells GO GABBA GABBA, OPEN YOUR EYES…which is a reference to the children’s show Yo Gabba Gabba. I think she thinks she’s saying Abra Cadabra, but doesn’t know the difference in the two sayings, and I don’t want to confuse her, she’s three for God’s sake. Plus it’s infinitely adorable. My friend Big Bob Burns says he never used words like “adorable” until he had a daughter of his own, so if Big Bob says its ok, it’s ok…Don’t mess with Big Bob.

So, a few months ago, when we would say goodbye, she would say, “bye daddee, I nub you, I hope you see ebberthing”. Which at first I just let go by. But she said it over and over, every time she said goodbye. Not just to me, but to everyone. And try as I might, I can’t figure out what she thinks she’s saying. But I love it. I’ve told many folks about this, they all have different ideas about what it means. All of them make sense, but none of them makes me feel like that’s what she means. And I don’t know what she means. But I have an idea that I want to hold onto. I’ll try to describe it.

When I hear “I hope you see ebberthing”, I have this collage that runs through my mind’s eye of a summer carnival at night, a ferris wheel going round, fireworks in the background. Kids eating hotdogs and cotton candy and the smell of funnel cakes in the air. And then I think of a gondola in a Italian waterway, with a driver in a red and white striped shirt and a bad pencil thin mustache, driving a couple in love. And then I see the zoo, but mostly just the elephants throwing loose hay on their backs and kicking up the dirt around them. And then I see a sunset over the Atlantic from a South Carolina beach and then a birthday cake with candles on it. Occasionally I see roller coasters and a popcorn cart popping fresh hot kernels…but all this is just in an instant, more like a wave of emotions than actual visualizations.

What does a three-year-old mean by everything? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know. What I’m certain of is that this expression will stick with me, and my girls for a long time. Maybe it means exactly what I said it does. Maybe it means whatever you want it to mean. And maybe it means what we need it to mean. And definitely, it means to me, that when she’s saying goodbye to me, she needs to have more to say, even though she doesn’t have the words to express it yet. She needs something more to say, to linger in conversation for just another second. Maybe she wants us to see everything. Maybe in her infinite child-wisdom, she believes that we’re supposed to see everything and that there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to. She doesn’t know about worldly restrictions like money, and time and geography. Whatever the case may be, I hope she sees everything too. And I hope I’m with her for most of it, and I hope she tells me about the rest of it. I hope we see ebberthing.