Interesting how rooms remember. A subtle music without sense, a vibration from within everything. Atoms spinning.

First night back since the stay on the West Coast. What's changed here, that I can feel so clearly? I listen to opera at medium volume. Normal at this hour. It's fairly mild outside, milder than usual for this time of year. I checked the little alarm clock when I came in, as a sort of guarantee of something familiar. My watch told me the same time, to the exact minute. Nothing has changed. Three weeks gone, only three weeks, why should anything have changed?

But I am wrong.

Leonore and I played here today. Her tiny ballet shoes are right here next to me, to tell me I wasn't dreaming. She forgot them here, and her hairbrush too. And she left the teddy bear upon my pillow, "to keep daddy company," she said.

I took that teddy bear everywhere with me during that trip to the west coast. Nounours came flying, shopping, sleeping and dreaming every place I went, a kind of tie between Leonore's life and mine for those twenty-one days. She was counting down on a little calendar I had made, one heart per day for her to color up. Three weeks is long for a four-year-old. A horizon of distant hearts to color.

We filled the last one yesterday, in fluorescent pink. She was real glad to have her daddy back. We danced together, the way we always do, and she got a free spin in the big plastic car, all over the living room. She got a free turn too sitting on my big pull-along suitcase on wheels. Fast. An amazon rider on her PVC mount. She loves action games with daddy. Movement. Joy. Life.

But back at the studio later, she stunned me. Kids remember things we would not ourselves dare recall. We came here for the afternoon while mom worked a weird shift. I picked up my guitar as I used to do a lot, back in kinder, sweeter creative days. Leonore watched me, entranced. She had listened years ago when she was less than two. Songs about a father's unshakeable love for his daughter. Renaud, and little Lolita. You know them, don't you?

I began to sing and Leonore came to sit in front of me. She almost knew the words, having heard them so often -- an echo, off the dusty cathedrals of time. She sat, and listened. I coaxed her to sing along for a bit, to lala and ladeeda along with the words springing from my memory like a reborn machine.

The music barely left her mouth. Her throat was stuck and scratchy, holding on lest the lyrics burst some important dam inside her, of feelings and tears she didn't want to welcome back.

It was an important moment. I sang a little more, to keep her from feeling embarrassed at the emotion she was holding. I would never have thought she had already learned such a thing. Holding back tears at four thin years of age . . . Had I shown her that? Is that what I was teaching my kid, between action games, painting lessons and swing sets? Or was someone teaching her that when I turned my back?

I put down the guitar, reached across to her and thank heaven, she agreed to come and sink her pretty nose into my shoulder. She cried for a while, without really letting go. My neck meant comfort but not complete safety, I guess. I spent too much time out of reach. I rubbed her back and felt like a fool.

Her life could be so easily made better again. So easily.

I could, like those other times, stretch my hand out to her mother, build a half-bridge upon which all three of us could stand for a little while in light breezes. I could trust that mother again, and hope my feelings would pay off where they never did before. Miracles happen.

I looked at her little shoes. I am sorry, tiny lady. I had to walk out to save myself. I hope you would do the same, later, in similar noise.

For now, we swallow hard, and remember as best we can that life is wonderful, that love is important.

Music too.

Let's try a new song.