Dear Luciana,

It used to be easy.

I’d grab my bag, kiss your forehead, and you’d keep chewing on whatever toy was closest. You didn’t know I was leaving. You didn’t know what leaving even was.

Now you know.

I pick up the bag and your face changes. You reach. You cling. You don’t just cry. You CRY cry. The kind with the big breath in before it comes out.

Turns out understanding is the part that hurts.

A couple of hours is still fine. Daddy goes, Daddy comes back, the snack situation remains uninterrupted.

When I do it for work it’s a week.

A week is different.

A week is a FaceTime goodnight where I can only see half your face because the iPad is tilted into the couch cushion. The other half is snot. A confident, glistening river of it, running down toward your mouth, which you are absentmindedly trying to lick.

You used to wave at the screen like I was a cartoon.

Now you press your forehead against it.

Now you say “Daddy come home” and I have to say “tomorrow,” and you have to learn that tomorrow is a real long time when you’re two.

I used to feel guilty that you didn’t notice when I left. Now I feel guilty that you do.

The crying when I walk out the door is bad. However, I can take the crying.

It’s the trying-to-kiss-an-iPad I can’t take.

I’ll be home soon. I’ll always come home.

Mommy is the one that isn’t coming home.

But you don’t know that yet either.

Besitos,

Daddy