Walking with Child: A Father's Day practice (not only for fathers)

Walking with our little one into the dusk on her first trip to FL, to visit family, just before the pandemic hit. Photographed by Almut Furchert.

I first learned to carry Hannah in the hospital, where the nurses kindly showed the new Papa the various tricks of how it is done. You support her weight evenly, ready to contain her if she moves, surround her for protection, and bend into her as though you would draw her into your heart. It is a meditative pose, holding your child as you would a scripture in Lectio Divina. Feeling her warmth and breath, closer communion than I have ever had with another human.

I carried her like this in the rose-dawn light, her first day out of the womb. Almut was blessedly asleep after long labor. She cried and I took her from her bed and carried her, watching alternately her and the sun as it rose on her first day, singing morning prayer. If this is the last memory I have in my life, I believe it will be enough.

For her first year of life, almost every eveni…