WHO IS THIS GIRL?

More people in Sonoma County and beyond, know more about Ella’s cancer then they do about who this little kid is.  I thought it only fair to accurately describe my incredible daughter, so that while you are falling in love with her cuteness (and she’s got the cuteness) you can also feel completely justified in falling in love with all of her.

Ella loves science!  I take all the credit for this, as I myself love the natural world around us and find the process of explaining those things fascinating.  I’m the kind of dad who buries fossils in the backyard in the hopes that one day, randomly, my child would stumble across one and start asking me a bunch of questions.  Questions I’d be all too eager to answer.

Ella did stumble upon one of these fossils one day, as she was out in the backyard digging in the dirt with an old paintbrush and flat-head screwdriver I had given her (after hinting that these tools might come in handy when searching for treasures in the dirt).

She found the fossil, brushed it off with the paintbrush and then stared at it with curiosity that was palpable.  I could imagine this is the same feeling I had when I was child, finding arrowheads on my grandparents property off Graton road here in Sebastopol, after my papa had freshly tilled the corn field.  But I don’t remember asking the same questions about those arrowheads as Ella asked my about the planted fish fossil, she had just “stumbled” upon.

She was truly intrigued by this find, wanted to know how old it was, what kind of fish it was, how it got there (alas I’ll need to edit the truth a bit on that one).  Question after question, the more she asked, the larger my heart swelled.  “I’m creating a scientist!”  I thought to myself, “this is the beginning, I’m here watching the birth of my daughters life passion”.  I’m of course guiding her, that is my job as a parent, but she is pulling her weight, she has a real interest.

Now, Ella is still a 7 year old girl, and although I’d be happy with her digging in the dirt all day, capturing and categorizing insects and mixing potions (glass bottles filled with water and food coloring) in her backyard playhouse, she does in fact (unfortunately) know who Miley Cyrus is.  Not only does she know it, she also knows that singing those Hannah Montana songs, as loud as she can, in the car while her father is listening to science Friday on NPR, will annoy father, and his reactions are sweeter than the best chocolate bar in the world.

Ella is hilarious, has incredible comedic timing, and has one target always in her sights…….DAD!

Take for example a wonderfully warm and sentimental moment Ella and I were having one evening as I was putting her to bed.  We had read our allotted 3 books, and were laying side by side, staring into each others eyes.  I was gently moving my finger down her nose and across her cheeks, something I had been doing since she was a baby, in an effort to calm her down when she would cry late at night.  Ella called it “eyes and nose” and when she would get just to the point of dozing off during a story, she would jolt herself awake to say “dad, will you do eyes and nose now?” to which I would be more than happy to oblige.

On this evening though, I had no way of knowing that this incredibly innocent and sweet gesture, would result in the most creative tease my daughter had yet to come up with.  As we stared into each others eyes, and as hers were gently shutting, she suddenly burst them open and said “Dad, you have a half brown eye”.

Oh no, she had finally noticed my half brown half blue eye, which had troubled me my whole life.  Teased in school, teased by my own family, I had many a time wished for optical technology to advance to the point where I could get an awesome robot eye, and not have to worry about this crap anymore.  But I was less worried about Ella knowing about it, I mean come on, she’s a kid, and she’s my kid, the last thing in the world she’d ever want to do is cause me any emotional turmoil.

So I kissed her goodnight and went to bed myself, feeling overwhelmingly proud to be a father, and then just slightly nervous.

The next day as I drove Ella to school, I suddenly felt the warm air in the car sucked away and replaced with the fridged winds of fate, as I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see my beautiful, innocent little angel; hair whipping around like a tornado, and screaming out the window “Glen William Stewart has a half brown eye, when he was a kid he put his finger in his butt and then put it in his eye!!!” at the top of her little lungs.

“What 6 year old waits 10 hours until their victim is trapped in a car, to unleash this sort of hilarious abuse?” I thought instantly.  “And why is she using my full name?”.

Because it’s much funnier than “My dad has a half brown eye” which may actually be embarrassing to her, if she yelled this at random people on the sidewalk.  No, she uses my whole name in the hopes that those people make no association between her in the car-seat, me driving, and her being my child.

I of course only find joy in this, I’m so impressed I can’t at all get mad at her.  I even start to roll the window up and say “Ella would you…” to stop and suddenly find I have no control over the automatic window, as she presses harder on the button and screams louder over my plea’s “Half brown, half blue, not normal!”.

She’s smart like you wouldn’t believe.  She’s creative, she’s charming, she’s everything to me.  I miss her so much, and even though I still get to hold her hand, kiss her face and tell her everything is gonna be alright, all I really want to hear is her voice screaming “Glen William Stewart has a half brown eye, a poo eye from when he was a kid!”.

The world needs my Ella, I need my Ella.  I told her softly as she was about to be taken in to have the cancer removed from her brain-stem “I want you to dream about finding a cure for the cancer that is making you sick, so that one day you can save children, and they’ll never have to be hurt like you are”.  She of course said sweetly “I will daddy” as the sedatives were taking affect and her eyes were closing and voice getting weaker.

I can only hope that the reason her coma has lasted two months, is because she is still working out that cure.

Either that or she is working on a joke that will that will put the “half brown eye” joke to shame and this is all just amazing comedy timing, and the punchline will only work if she’s been in this coma for two months.

Doesn’t matter to me, I just want her back.

Picture of Dad's half-brown eye. Notice all the "ha ha's".