Father's Day

When a woman is young and chooses a husband, he might seem good enough get off his butt and propose, look up at her from his playstation now and then, fix the occasional broken thing (or break it worse) and remember important dates. Few women are forward thinking enough to wonder if he is the right person to father her children. I simply lucked out.

Right now, my daughter is not making it easy to be a father. She is at the stage where every suggestion is met with a resounding "NO!" When my husband simply walks into a room, she says, "No, no, no, no, daddy." This started after I had to leave town for a couple days, and we are guessing it continues because she thinks that by him coming into the room, I might exit. He has also had to travel an excessive amount with his new job. Overall, she is pretty mommy-centered these days, which probably breaks his heart little by little.

What my daughter does not see is that she has replaced me as the top girl in his life. When he sees us, he looks at her first, reaches for her first. This is all okay with me, until the day she catches on and they form a little daddy-daughter alliance against mom. Even then, I will remember that important bond in a girl's life, and it will still be more than okay.

I hope that she uses her father as her standard of how she expects men to behave. If she looks for the qualities of her father in other men, she will be looking for patience, chivalry, humor and the general willingness to drop everything to help if you nag him enough.

Every time I look at this photo, I think to myself how silly I was to assume that I would be his greatest love.