Gutter Races

Lo and behold it rained here in the desert yesterday. My daughter and I were alone for the afternoon and she delighted in playing outdoors, generally making a mess on the back porch. I stayed inside doing something I thought was pretty important at the time.

While taking the dog out front I realized that we had a mini flood moving down our gutter...just enough to splash your feet in. An immediate conversation in my mind went something like this:

"Glad she isn't seeing this...she'd want to come out here and play."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Well, I'd have to play with her and I have very important things to do."

"Like what?"

Thank goodness my "god-father" side wins out over the "selfish-father" side.

All I had to do was remind her of our previous rains and she was out the door like a shot with a toy in hand to toss in the water and watch it rush down the street. I used the match I was going to light the grill with (for the steak dinner I was soon to make). We had a great time racing flower's, leaves, and tiny sticks down the street. She was in heaven splashing bare-footed in the water.

The good/bad thing about the gutter races is they are over as soon as the run-off from the streets above runs out...which it soon did. After our last race, as we walked back up to the house, she skipped along and joyfully announced, "That was fun Daddy!" She also gave her mother a detailed report of our gutter races, and how she used this and I used that, and she won this and I won that that evening.

God, please KILL my selfish-father side. It threatens to rob my daughter of so many opportunities for joy and learning....not only that, it threatens to rob me of the awesome reward of a happy, healthy, loving daughter (selfishness betrays itself by limiting one's life rather than adding to it).

I think the next time it rains, I'll race her out the door...barefeet and all.

(I note that she had nothing to report to her mother about the cartoons we watched, nor the video game we played earlier that day....hmmmm. Could it be that those are not really important nor memorable to her?!)