On Being a Daddy’s Girl

I will admit it: I was an unapologetic daddy’s girl. Not always. Like a lot of kids, I was closest to my mother for years because I spent more time with her. But I was always ecstatic when my dad got home from work.

I was a very curious child and from the time I learned to talk I had nothing but questions for my mother. She answered as best as she could, but frequently my questions (“How does gravity work?” “Why is water wet?”) were too much for her.
“Ask your father when he gets home,” she’d say. And so when my poor father came home from a ten-hour shift at the power plant, he was greeted with a rapid-fire stream of questions from his youngest child. And you know what? He answered every single one. He tried to make things simple for me but he never lied to me or brushed me off. And I asked some odd questions. How did he make electricity at the power plant? And what was electricity made of? How come some cars had a stick shift and some didn’t? Why, once they made the first automatic, did they ever bother making any more stick shifts? Why did some people’s homes catch on fire? Where did the fish in the lake come from? He could always tell me.

The older I got, the better I got to know my father – not just as a dad, but as a person. He was a fascinating man. He knew everything, it seemed. I know that a lot of kids go through a phase where they think their parents are idiots, but that never happened with me. I have always felt that my dad was the smartest man I’d ever met.
My dad taught me so much. Not just about trivial things, like automotive transmissions or voltage. He taught me important things, things about life and death and God and the universe. And he did so much. He could fix anything and everything. He could find anything I lost. He could solve almost any problem. I don’t think I really realized how much he did and how much I relied on him until he died.

When I was considering adoption, my dad was actually an important factor. I didn’t have a choice in losing my dad. He had brain cancer and I was powerless to stop it. I realized as I thought about it that I’d had the most amazing dad in the world … and I was choosing for Roo not to have that. I was choosing for her to be fatherless. A little girl needs a dad! And a big girl needs a dad – as does a teenage girl, and a young woman, and a not-so-young woman. How could I deny Roo a good daddy?

I love M dearly. I think the world of her. I trust her to be a better mom for Roo than I could be. But I would love for Roo to be a daddy’s girl. When I met P and M, and it occurred to me that they might like to hold her, I handed her first to P. And she gave him the biggest smile I had ever seen on that sweet little face. It was a look that said, “Daddy! It’s really you! I’m so happy to meet you!” Roo LOVES her daddy. She loves her mommy, too, of course. But I confess, I’m hoping to hear in a few years that when P gets home from work, Roo runs through the house to greet him at the door.

I had the best dad in the world, and I am so blessed to be sealed to him and my mom for eternity. It is an amazing feeling to know that I’ve given the same to Roo – a wonderful mother and father who are hers, and she theirs, forever.