Just When You Think You've Lost Them

Spring break was nice for us. Low on funds we spent most of the week at home. This allowed for many "Daddy and Dora" mornings. I am especially blessed with a job which, during certain times, allows me to stay home (summers and holidays mainly). My wife works in the mornings and I work in the afternoons. This is where Daddy and Dora morning or days began.

Being an only child, our daughter needs playmates and who better to play with her than her dear old dad. So it started one morning long ago (about 5 years ago actually) with my daughter asking me to play "talk animals" with her (that's another story altogether). This became routine and Dora began asking "Is today a Daddy and Dora day?"

Though they have evolved over time, we still have our Daddy and Dora mornings and sometimes days. (I even have the t-shirt.) Spring break allowed us 6 Daddy and Dora mornings (and one whole Daddy and Dora day.) It was nice to connect with the princess.

This morning, day two of our return to normal post holiday life and thus, our Tuesday trip to 2nd grade drop off, my daughter forwent (?) her usual request of "Aragorn" (o.k., that's another story too) and simply informed me, "I love to read" as she opened her Calvin and Hobbs anthology (well, it's mine really). Silence on the way to school.

I didn't like it. Is this what we will become, my own parents and I not speaking on the way to places? She'll do her thing and I'll have to sit here and try to think up something to say to pull her into a conversation. Gosh I hope not. I want her to talk to me. I want her to want to talk to me. I need the connection, and I know that she does too.

She was still reading as we neared her school when all of a sudden she said, "Aragorn!" I looked and she showed me she had once again finished off a rather large book. "We're at the school already!" I half kidded, and told her a small bit of the story we were working on (Aragorn and Chastity (Daddy and child). She figured out the riddle I posed (part of the story) and beamed at her cleverness. (me too) It was time to exit the car. Time to run into school. Time for our separation, a harder time for me I think than her...but today, just when I had been thinking I was losing her, she took several steps toward the door, turned, and ran back to the car for a quick kiss and an "I love you Daddy."

If she only knew.