The Father

The mirror was cracked. It hung just inside the bedroom of our home with a crack in it that, when I stood in just the right place, was positioned over my eye and the right side of my weathered face to look like a scar that I might have obtained in raging battle. But I had been more careful than that since setting out to sea. Adelaide would never forgive me if anything happened to me; she made me promise to come back home without ever being any different than when I set out. However, I could only make that promise in way of my physical health. I know that my seafaring ways had altered my character beyond what it ever was before.
Of course, she never had to make the same promise to me, but when I returned home to find her pregnant with our first child I couldn't help but be aghast. Shocked. And then delighted.
We might have a son whom I could take with me to sea and teach the ways of my world. He could inherit my ship, and my crew if they would have him. He could take on the legacy of Captain Swan.
But then, Adelaide had other hopes in mind. Where I wanted a son, she wanted a daughter for the exact opposite reasons. If we had a son she knew there would be a day when I would take him out to sea with me, and she would be left behind for weeks at a time. She did not believe that would happen if we were to have a daughter. It wasn't that she resented my hopes or was displeased with me for always heading out but she had hopes of her own and one of us would end up disappointed, at least for a time.
From that point onward, nothing happened as I, or anyone else for that matter, could have expected. And it wasn't simply because Adelaide gave birth to a daughter; that wasn't the reason at all. My spirits may have been dampened, but not crushed, and I was only disappointed at first, before I realized the resemblances between my wife and our daughter. They shared the same eyes, the same hair. Adelaide was certain that she already demonstrated my stubbornness and tenacity but I saw her as a smaller, more innocent version of my wife and I knew that I could love her just as fully. I now could look forward not only to my wife, but the prospect of fatherhood as well, when I returned home from my journeys. I suppose it was because it happened so soon after the birth of our daughter, of Willow Adelaide Swan, that I remember it so well: the day that I met Alek Titus.
That was the day that any expectations I might have held for the future were dashed into the salty sea air, gone from my grasp forever. Everything changed.