Nothing makes a Dad feel more special than putting a smile on his daughter's face. It doesn't matter how big or how small the action or item that brought on the smile. It could be a Happy Meal from McDonalds when she's three, or a first car for her sixteenth birthday. It's the smile on her face that makes all the effort of raising her worthwhile.
I'm blessed with two children of my own, and as luck would have it, I've been blessed with one of each a son and a daughter. They both came into this world via cesarean birth, and so I had the unusual pleasure of getting to hold and feed both of my children before their mother did. Of course, that also meant that I got the lion's share of dirty diapers to change until their mother's belly was more or less healed. I often remind my children that I was the one giving them their first bottles and changing their first diapers in an effort to stay close to them; they don't live with me anymore and instead, their mother has primary custody and I'm relegated to being a "weekend dad".
It is difficult to transition from living with your children, seeing them every day, helping them with their homework, feeding and bathing them each night, to seeing them once every week or two. The level of influence you have over them gets smaller and smaller and you tend to grow apart. They stopped calling me every day about two months into the separation, and after about six months the calls became so infrequent that even I got used to not talking with them all the time. It's not something I ever wanted to get used to, but I've adapted in spite of not wanting to. I only see my kids about once every two weeks, but I do my best to make the best of the time we have together and to keep my relationship (and influence) with them strong. My son and I are still close, and he's still a shorter, blonde headed version of me. He was old enough when his mother and I split that I'd had enough of an influence on him that he hasn't changed much in the last four years.
My daughter, Skylar, is a different story.
Over the last four and a half years, she's undergone more changes than I ever would have imagined. I have a wonderful picture of the two of us, taken on Christmas morning right before her mother and I split up. She was four years old at the time and I'm holding her in my arms, her head held tightly to mine by her arm wrapped around my neck. She's wearing a pair of lime green shorts and a yellow t-shirt…clothes she picked for herself that morning when she woke up and changed out of her PJs.
The significance of what she's wearing then is that she wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of shorts, now, unless she's going to bed. She used to wear girls' clothes, play with makeup and jewelry, and would allow me to put her in a dress to go out for dinner or a movie, or to visit family or friends. Now, at nine, she doesn't own a dress. She swears she's a tomboy and that tomboys don't wear dresses, and I'm having an impossible time convincing her otherwise. She now wears blue jeans and boys t-shirts and refuses to do anything that she feels is too "girly." Daddy's little girl has become Daddy's little tomboy.
Last summer, when I had the kids over for a week, Skylar wanted to learn to ride a bike. So my girlfriend, Mary, took her out to a bike shop and helped her pick one out. Over the course of about two days, we finally convinced her to actually try riding the bike, and within about 30 minutes, she was off! It was a moment that I was forced to miss as I was spending time with my son while allowing Mary and Skylar some bonding time, but I'll never forget the joy in her eyes when they got back from the large parking lot that she's learned in and told me she could ride. She was all left turns and wide pathways the first several times we rode together, but as the summer went on she became quite the little cyclist.
So it came as no surprise this summer when we knew we'd have the kids for a week that Skylar would want to learn something else that is generally thought of as "something boys do." She's loves playing Tony Hawk's Underground on her X-Box and has a really old skateboard that has become the family Rottweiler's chew toy, so naturally she wanted to learn to ride a skateboard. This meant booking lessons with a private instructor as she has anger issues with failing or having difficulty with something, and in front of a group it's even worse. So we bought her a Tony Hawk skateboard and booked a skateboarding pro of about 20 named Tom and scheduled four lessons for her the week she was to be over.
The first three days of lessons, she was scared and frustrated, and even a little embarrassed when things didn't go exactly as she might have liked. Had I not been there to keep her motivated, I think she would have quit after about the first ten minutes. But I wouldn't let her quit, as she has a horrible tendency to do so whenever things aren't going her way. As I know that things don't always go the way we want them to in life, I have a responsibility to cultivate the "never give up" attitude that I've worked so hard to develop in myself.
After three days of bumps and bruises, though with many more successes than failures, I was still glad that this was to be the last day of lessons, both for her sake and for mine. The smiles had been infrequent and the attitude had gotten much worse as the days had gone by. Her desire to quit was for outstretching her desire to learn, and I, like her, just wanted it over with. But I wasn't about to cancel the last lesson and let her off so easily as that. In spite of herself, I wanted her to have a good experience and finish what she'd started.
"What time is it, Dad," Skylar asks me as we hang out in the living room, watching SpongeBob after breakfast. She has milk dried on her chin and a look of abject boredom on her impish face. I tell her its 10:30 as I use a napkin to wipe away the milk. She responds with an over-exaggerated sigh, shoulders slumping in an early defeat. "Tom's late again," she whines. I look at her, dressed for success in her too-long blue jeans, Z-strap sneakers, and brand new t-shirt bearing images of skateboards and monstrous faces, and realize that her impatience is likely to ruin her entire day unless I do something about it.
So I get up, take her by the hand, and walk her to the front door where her Tony Hawk skateboard sits bearing the weight of her pads and helmet. She stops at the top of the steps, her hand falling limply from my grasp and her attitude starting to worsen. I take a seat on the bottom step and look up at her, lifting the mesh bag holding her pads and helmet from its resting place on her board. "Let's get ready for Tom, then," I say over my shoulder. She's still frowning as she walks slowly, almost dragging her feet down the four or five steps to the floor of the split foyer, her hand dragging along the curving rail that parallels the circular staircase. I help her into her knee pads first, the operation of the black plastic and Velcro contraptions well within her nine-year-old capabilities, but since she still likes to have daddy help her with these things, I continue to make myself useful until she doesn't want my help anymore. I know her independence is just around the corner.
After the knee pads come the elbows, then her helmet, and finally, the wrist guards. Once all the protective gear is on, I suggest we go down to the garage for her to practice her tic-tacks on the level smooth surface of the concrete floor. She readily agrees, her smile spreading from cheek to cheek as we walk the rest of the way downstairs and make our way into the garage.
"Are you going to move your car?" she asks me once she's dropped her board to the floor. I follow her gaze from one side of the garage to the other and briefly envision her skateboard smashing out a window in my car, but realize the likelihood of such a thing is miniscule…about as likely as being struck by lightning. Twice. I tell her to go ahead. "All you're doing is practicing tic-tacks so you can show Tom how much progress you've made." I step down into the garage and maneuver a cardboard box and recycling bin between her and my car just in case the board goes rolling toward it, to save myself the trouble of climbing underneath to fetch her board. "Show me what you can do!"
She steps onto the board and pushes herself along at slow, almost snail speed. I encourage her to practice and she does so, lifting the front end of her board first right, then left, beating out a staccato, off-beat rhythm as the wheels come back down time and again. It takes her several runs before she's satisfied, and she finally makes a run from one end of the garage to the other, bouncing side-to-side most of the way. She's smiling and talking up a storm now, her "bad day" made better because daddy was there to fix it for her.
Is there a better feeling than this?
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