If you missed part 1, you can find it here.
Dad
Daddy’s
little girl
Learned
to make sunshine out of rain
She was
taught to live each day
As though
she’d never live again
He showed
her the light in darkness
And that
it was never wrong to love
That
everyone deserves a chance
And that
there’s more than sky above
I walked
in his footsteps
So much
bigger than mine
I walked
in his shadow
So much
larger than life
Daddy’s
little girl
Living
through his eyes
Daddy’s
little girl
Learned
to see what lies beneath
She was
taught to believe
In those
who had nothing to believe
He showed
her angels fallen
And wiped
the tears from her eyes
Said
they’re not letting go of Heaven, baby
They’re only
learning how to fly
I walk in
his footsteps
So much
larger than mine
I walk in
his shadow
So much
larger than life
Daddy’s
little girl
Had to
say goodbye
Ah, but
Daddy’s little girl
Has her
Daddy’s eyes.
My earliest memory is of him, with my mother’s pantyhose on
his head, dancing around, trying to make me laugh. I swore for years that he was pretending to
be a bunny.
“No,” he’d correct me, quite seriously – every time, “I was
a jester.” Because when a grown man puts a woman’s
pantyhose on his head, he’d better either be robbing a bank or pretending to be
a jester to make his child giggle.
Anything else would just be silly.
I made a point of retelling the story as him pretending to
be a bunny, just so he’d correct me.
My mom insisted that I fell in love with him first, as a two
year old at my Aunt Angel’s house. I’m
inclined to believe her, and since the majority of my early childhood was spent
tagging along with him while he did odd jobs or dumpster-dove, we were close.
It’s a funny thing when you’re close with someone though,
you know that you can be ornery and sometimes downright mean, and they’ll still
love you and you know they’ll always forgive you. This was something my Dad apparently banked
on.
When I was four, Dad bet me that he could eat a donut hole.
“No you can’t,” I argued, “It’s a hole, you can’t eat a hole.”
“Yes I can.”
“There’s nothing there.
You can’t eat something that isn’t there.”
This went on for a while.
Finally he convinced me to bet him, with the very last donut in the box (which
was mine, by the way), that he could, in fact, eat a donut hole.
To my pint-sized horror, he shoved that entire donut in his
mouth, and it was gone before I knew what had happened. I stared at him, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed
for a full 5 seconds before bursting into tears. My.
Donut.
Mine.
And he ate it.
Just…ate
it.
Looking back, I feel kind of bad that I cried so hard and so
pitifully that he immediately took me to the store and bought me my own box of
donuts. Kind of. He ate my donut, after all.
Whole.
Although, he reminded me many times of how, when I was very
small and it was wet and cold outside, he’d carried me on his shoulders so I
wouldn’t get my feet wet. I’d repaid him
with my weak bladder, peeing all down his neck and back and he’d spent that day
wet with urine in the cold and probably smelling to high heaven to boot. He’d continued to carry me on his shoulders
anyway, and didn’t scold or shame me, or tell people it was my fault when they
wrinkled their noses up at the smell. He
only brought it up when I mentioned the infamous donut.
You win, Dad.
That same year, he built me a playhouse in our backyard, out
of big pieces of particle board. I had
the healthy imagination of a 4 year old, so I spent my time in that playhouse
conducting interviews with celebrities (Mozart was my favorite, but he was so
conceited that I actually told him to shut his doody-face one time because he
wouldn’t shut up about how brilliant he was), playing house, conducting
top-secret experiments, and shooting music videos, among many, many other
things.
Then came the day that I was an archaeologist and dug holes
all through the dirt floor of my ancient ruins with a stick. I hit pay-dirt on the fifth hole: an obviously prehistoric bone that had been
unearthed by me and would bring me millions.
Covered in dirt, I ran excitedly into the house with this glorious find
to show Dad. He’d be so proud of me, and
I’d be so rich he’d have to ask me for
donut money.
“Daddy, daddy -” he cocked an eyebrow at me over his book as
I paused to catch my breath, “a dinosaur bone!”
“A dino-what?”
“I found a dinosaur bone!”
“You did?” Cue that
false enthusiasm that parents get when their kids are excited and they don’t
want to kill their enthusiasm. “Let me see.”
I presented it to him proudly.
“That’s great, kiddo, but uh ... it’s a pork chop bone.”
I was quite deeply offended.
I was most certainly not a
pork chop bone. I told him so.
We argued for several minutes, until he got up from his
chair, went into the kitchen, and presented me with a package of pork chops out
of the freezer. I looked at it
suspiciously. Compared my dinosaur bone
with one of the bones I could clearly see in the package. My bone was not a pork chop bone, I just knew
it. It was –
a pork chop bone.
As parents do, he seemed to recognize the exact second that
I realized he was right. He was
smirking, an expression that sent my toddler mind into a fury.
Don’t look so
smug. You ate my donut.
Rather than admit that he was right and I would not be rich
and famous for finding some long lost remnant from the Jurassic era, I did the
only thing my four year old mind could think of to do.
I burst into tears.
Dad hugged me and calmed me down, and gave me a cookie.
Score!
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