M*A*S*H with Mary Ann

By Alan K. Stout

Weekender Editor  

July 4, 2007

 

We've had her for almost five months now. She was born on February 9 and we brought her home just a few days before the biggest blizzard of the winter. We gave her an old family name, a name shared by her grandmother, and before that, her great-grandmother and great-great grandmother.

 

My daughter, Mary Ann, in just five months, has already stolen my heart. And though she’s still a relative newcomer to my life, I can’t imagine life without her.

 

Though I love music and sports and all of the things a man would like to share with a son, it was no secret in our family that this daddy always wanted a little girl, and already my daughter, with just her smile, has a way of putting everything in my life into perfect perspective.

 

Having a bad day, and you get that smile?

 

Suddenly, that day isn’t so bad.

 

Those first few days of her life back in February were memorable, mostly because of her arrival, and also because - since it was the dead of winter, frigid cold and dark most of the time - we didn’t do much other than stay inside and welcome this new little princess into our world. I recall sitting on the sofa and sometimes holding her for four or five straight hours, and though she slept most of the time, I will always remember with fondness those cold winter days and nights when Mary Ann and I first started to get to know one another, and when we first began what has become one of our nightly traditions.

 

We watch “M*A*S*H.”

 

I think it began that very first week we brought her home. I'd hold her in my arms as she slept and enjoy the old reruns and the crazy antics of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. I'd laugh at Frank Burns, Radar, Henry Blake, Trapper, B.J., Klinger, Winchester and Colonel Potter. And most of all, I'd laugh at Hawkeye’s wisecracks.

 

Holding Mary Ann and laughing at Hawkeye.

 

It’s something I'll always associate with the winter of 2007, and as we now get into the middle of summer, it’s still something that we do a few times a week. Only now, she’s much more animated and more in tune to her surroundings. I get those smiles all the time, and I sometimes feel as if she really is watching with me, and laughing at Hawkeye.

 

When we first learned we were having a daughter last year, I found myself very excited about her life, but not in ways that involved me. Of course I'm looking forward to all of the fun things that lie ahead in the coming years ... pigtails and dance recitals and amusement parks and Santa. I always want to be not only her father, but also her friend, and I will always be there for her throughout her life. But when I thought about her in the months before she was born, I was more exited about the fact that our child will experience some of the joys and beauty of this world on her own. I thought about, a few years from now, when she makes her first friend. I thought about when she’s about 17, and she stays up all night at the beach with her friends for the first time and watches the sun rise over the ocean. I thought about her traveling the country and the world, as an adult, and experiencing the joy of visiting new places.

 

I realize that, throughout her life, she’ll probably always remember most of those things. She’ll remember the pigtails, dance recitals, amusement parks and Santa, and of course, she’ll remember that first friend, that first time she saw the sun rise over the sea, and that first time she saw San Francisco, London or Paris.

 

What she won’t remember at all, however, are these past few months. She won’t remember the blizzard that she came home to, or the times I held her for five straight hours, or how her first smile made me smile. I know this and I understand this. We simply don’t remember much at all from our first few years. But still, I like to think that someday, many years from now, maybe just some of it will come back to her from time to time.

 

Maybe some cold winter night, many years from now, she'll be doing a little channel surfing and something will make her stop.

 

Maybe she'll have a little memory of sitting on her daddy’s lap, and somehow regain that sense of feeling safe and loved, and being welcomed into this world with a joy like no other.

 

Maybe she'll sit there, flash one of those great smiles of hers, and laugh at Hawkeye.