matt, liz and madeline

Some­times a post — or even an entire web­site — ren­ders the reader com­pletely unable to artic­u­late the emo­tions invoked by the piece. So it is with many of the posts pub­lished by Matt Logelin at matt, liz and made­line.

How I man­aged not to hear about his site until very recently, I don’t know. But some­how I clicked from link to link to link one foggy evening while on vaca­tion … and even­tu­ally I found myself mes­mer­ized by images of a beau­ti­ful lit­tle blond girl named Madeline.

If you, like me, have not vis­ited before, you must begin your explo­ration of the site here: What hap­pened? And like me, you will prob­a­bly find your­self click­ing from entry to entry to entry, read­ing Matt’s raw, hon­est, heart-wrenching account of how he came to be a sin­gle father rais­ing a beau­ti­ful lit­tle blond girl with­out the love of his life at his side.

We take so much of our daily lives — and the peo­ple in them — for granted, but Matt can no longer do that. When Made­line was just a few weeks old, he poignantly pon­dered her aca­d­e­mic future:

but what’s gonna hap­pen
when she needs help
with her
eco­nom­ics home­work?
(or sci­ence, math, psy­chol­ogy or any of the other sub­jects her momma stud­ied with ease)?
that easy answer…
“go ask your mom.”
to her ques­tion…
“can you help me with this?”
is out the door.

Matt says he doesn’t believe in signs, but the Post of the Day Award goes to an entry I found in the archives, orig­i­nally pub­lished on August 13, 2009. An obscure brand of wine — one he had only heard of because friends gave a bot­tle to him and Liz, sug­gest­ing that they savor it dur­ing an anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion in “a year that won’t hap­pen” — sat on the shelf of the bar Matt walked into. $22 per glass. A con­ver­sa­tion with the wait­ress. Another life touched. The story told to his faith­ful read­ers who now num­ber one more than they did the night I clicked my way to his site.

Don’t miss Matt’s photo-rich posts about their recent trip to India.

Click your way to the Post of the Day: about an hour ago … You’ll be glad you did. Then go hug whomever it is that you love.

Tech­no­rati Tags: matt liz and made­line, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

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