I hate writing essays....always have always will. If you have a minute or two please read this one that I had to write for this class I am taking. It is the only one that I wrote in my life that I really enjoyed writing, the words just flowed. Im sure there are plenty of grammatical errors but thats irrelevant to me. This year my daughter, Danae, is going to be going off to college. Reflecting back over time we have had private phrases that would seem like gibberish to others or just some random meaningless phrase. It seems like in each phase of her life there has been some secret words that come out of nowhere and become very important to us and bring about hysterical fits of laughter. There are two that stick out the most to me. Each one holds special memories and are a book mark in time. Shortly after she was born her mother and I decided that we no longer wanted to be in a romantic relationship with each other. It was not a violent break up and to this day we still have a very good almost blood relative type of relationship. I was always able to see my daughter even though we didn’t have the ability to live with each other. Whenever I would see her I would ask her if she was my baby girl. Her response would be a very declarative, “No!” At this point I would pick her up, lay her on her back and begin to tickle her relentlessly. I would say to her as fast as could, “What do you mean you’re not my baby girl! You know when I ask if you’re my baby girl that you’re supposed to say you’re my baby girl! Don’t tell me you’re not my baby girl! You’re my baby girl! Are you my baby girl?” Of course she would respond, “No!” and the whole thing would start over again and continue a few more times until we were both exhausted from laughter. When Danae was about five years old I transferred with my job from New York to Maryland. We were not really able to see each other nearly as much as we would have liked but we were able to talk on the phone. All it would take was for me to ask her if she was my baby girl and she would start to laugh even before she could get out the usual, “No!” Once I began to ask her if she was my baby girl it was all over. It was as if we were together and I was tickling her again. Her mother would sometimes get on the phone when Danae and I were finished talking and say, “What the hell did you say to her? She’s going crazy over here.” To which I would calmly respond, “I just asked her if she was my baby girl.” Time passed and eventually Danae’s name became simply, Baby Girl. Only to me though, after all she is “my” baby girl. I ended up joining the military so our time together became even less. I would usually be able to come home from wherever I was stationed twice a year. Once around Christmas time and then again sometime during the summer months. One specific leave period, I was home during the winter holidays spending time with my Baby Girl and we were watching television. I think she was around twelve or thirteen at the time and some random commercial was on advertising something to do with Christmas songs. Neither of us were paying much attention and then Bing Crosby started to sing Happy Holiday. Without thinking in my best, or worst depending on your definition, imitation of Bing Crosby I blurted out, “Happy holidays!” as I swiveled my head down and towards her. It was the most hilarious thing to both of us, particularly since neither one of us could tell you one other song that Bing Crosby sang, and it was more mockery than anything else. As my time home was coming to an end both my daughter and I were obviously sad. I was about to walk out the door I called my baby girl over gave her hug and we were both in tears. I reached up under her chin, tickled her and once again blurted out, “Happy holidays!” It didn’t cause the all out, rolling on the floor laughing session it had previously but it did lighten the mood enough so that I was able to walk out of the door. Now, whenever we depart from one another we patiently wait until the last minute and try to tickle the other under the chin and give a Bing Crosby like happy holiday! It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of summer, the start of fall or the end of spring. The goal is to get the other last. From the outside looking in people might think that there is something wrong with us but we don’t care. If you cant be there physically that doesnt mean you cant be a father. My daughter means the world to me and I know I mean the world to her.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 02:31:18 +0000
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