Category: The Daughter Project
I Couldn’t Be More Proud
So, remember my anti-bad teachers rant(s)? Only moments ago, H- told me something that *I think* gave me a glimpse of heaven.
She said, “Dad, today I fell asleep at school.”
A bit shocked, I asked, “When? Where were you?”
She said, “While we were watching T.V.”
Yippee!!! Hallelujah!! She’s doing it! Victory!!
I said, “Will you do something for me?”
She answered, “What?”
“Will you fall asleep every time you watch TV?”
(See what I’m doing here?)
“Okay, Daddy.”
So, from now on, if my little ruse works, I’ll have contributed to a problem which proves the problem. I cannot wait for some teacher or administrator to address me about H-‘s sleeping habits at school. The very thought of that moment is, itself, nourishment to my soul.
It’s A Trap!
Looking at the still-stiff, sixteen year old, canvas duffel bag with his daughter, he couldn’t prevent the thought, “Man, I can’t believe I still use this bag-”
“What’s in that pocket, daddy?” she interrupted. “Socks?” she guessed as she reached with a raptor’s velocity into the opening. Looking up at him, her excitement was betrayed by her breathlessness and she said, “A glove?!”
“Your gloves,” he answered, pulling out the second one, anxious to keep the pair united. “From when you were smaller. Just give them here.”
“But I want to wear them.”
“Fine. Whatever. Actually, no. Don’t put them on just yet. We have to go to church-”
“Aww.”
“-But,” he continued, “I’ll put them in the go-bag and you can put them on after we change into comfy clothes for the trip. Deal?”
“Deal.”
****
Finding themselves changing in the old church’s random nursing station, the father couldn’t have had more on his mind. Remnants of the adrenaline his body released earlier that morning whilst playing the piano for the congregation lingered, and also capturing his attention was the anxiety of starting a road-trip from an unknown location in the city.
“My hands are cold, Daddy.”
“Okay, H-. That’s fine,” he said. “We’ll be in the car in a minute.”
Upon her entry into the back seat, she found the gloves and put them on.
“Clevah gairl,” he mumbled to himself.
“So you’re hands were cold, eh?” he asked, laughing. “You sure do have a one track mind. ‘I see gloves. I want to wear gloves. Dad controls gloves. Gloves make hands warm. I need cold hands. Must share hand temperature with Dad.’ Ha.”
****
“Daddy, I’m hungry. When are we stopping for lunch?”
“We’re headed to Limon for lunch. I just want to knock out a bit of the trip before we stop. Sound fair?”
“Yes.”
****
“H-, where are you going? The restroom is over here.”
“Huh-uh,” she said, pointing to the family restroom sign.
“Ah. Okay. Good call. Let’s go then. We need to hurry and get back on the road.”
She stood and watched as he ran his hands under the faucet.
“You gonna wash your hands or what?”
He watched an incredulous look come over her face as she began to fiddle with her hands.
“You want me to take off my gloves?”
Mirroring the mood with his own bewildered look, he answered, “You still have your gloves on? Fine. Okay. Nope. I guess there’s no need to wash your hands if you went potty with your gloves on. Come on. Let’s go.”
To Batman: I’m Sorry For Ever Doubting You
So I don’t like admitting that there are ever any parts of anything to do with Batman that I question, but for a long time I had a lingering doubt that the whole “Make the climb…without the rope” theory would work. You know, the idea that only when we are spurred on by the fear of death in all its finality will we truly find the strength to do what needs to be done. Well, it turns out I was wrong. The fear of death does increase jumping distance.
Picture this: H- and I at the pool. Goggles on. We’re in the three-foot deep shallow end. Every four seconds she’s adding the post-script to what I can only describe as an entry into a no-holds-barred splashing contest, “See, Daddy? I can swim?”
I smile and say, “Just about.”
Then she says, “I want to jump in.”
I say, “Go ahead.”
She gets out of the pool and with a decent running start proceeds to jump into this same three-foot deep shallow end of the pool. Her head never does go fully under the water and she says, “Ow.”
I say, “You should tuck your knees up so you don’t just land on your feet.”
She says, “Like a cannon-ball?”
I say, “Yep.” So off she goes for attempt number two.
“Ow. I can’t really do a cannon-ball.”
I say, “Well, then, you should come over to the deeper end and jump in.” She starts shaking her head and I soothe, “I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”
Notwithstanding all the splashing, she actually can stay afloat a while during her attempts to swim in the shallow end. And if I remember right, swimming is like riding a bike. Add these things together, and you will see me a decent bit away from the wall in the hopes that when she jumps in, she may just start swimming to me and more importantly, realize she actually can swim. Ta da.
But no.
Instead, I learn that she can jump a helluva lot farther than I ever expected or have seen before as she nearly tackled me in a leap that can only be described as springing from legs attached to a brain that really thought a visit to the pool with her father might be the last event on her earthly journey.
The lesson: Teach kids how to swim before how to read the number four.
It’s Just Us, Daddy, Written by Pete Deakon and Illustrated by Kaelyn Williams Now Available On Kindle. Buy it!
Buy it today for $2.99 by clicking here or on the images. And even if you don’t have $2.99 to spare, please, please add a review so that balance is restored to the force.
Dirty Floors
“I’m going to put on my socks just like you do, daddy,” H- volunteered one morning as she got dressed.
The little girl walked barefoot from her room to the kitchen, transitioning from carpet to faux-hardwood floors along the way. Next, she lifted her little foot up onto the kitchen chair. Her father watched with great intent as this struggle ended with no small amount of relief on her part. Nearly doing the standing splits, she now stood with one leg on the chair, one on the ground. Her body language displayed the smallest hint of her enjoying having his full attention. He saw her mimic his routine exactly. She bent forward, wiped off the bottom of her bare foot, and pulled the tiny sock on.
“Point taken,” the man thought to himself, smiling. “You’ve definitely got the gift, H-.”
“Where are you going, daddy?” she asked.
“To get the vacuum.”
The Morning Paper
Beginning the previous night during a skype session with grandma and pops, little H- manifested a year old Lego instruction guide previously hidden in the depths of her room. Naturally, the pamphlet was equal part instructions and advertisements. As her birthday was rapidly approaching, H- was sure to make her requests for new Lego sets earnestly.
The following morning, her dad placed her bowl of milk-less Cinnamon Toast Crunch in front of her, remembering the spoon and everything this time. He then began to fix himself a bowl and saw she was again engaged by this Lego pamphlet.
“What are you doing, H-?” he asked.
“I’m reading the newspaper,” she answered nonchalantly.
“Who reads the newspaper anymore?” he questioned out loud, looking to challenge the lass.
“Grandma and pops,” she replied, unphased.
“Oh,” he muttered. It was true. The Kansas City Star still made it onto the grandparents’ kitchen table every day. “So, what’s going on? Anything important?”
“Well,” H- began with a breath, “it looks like they’re building something.”
Pooches
“I want macaroni and cheese,” H- said as the waitress held out her pad. She smiled at the girl’s boldness.
Then addressing the little girl’s dad, the waitress clarified, “It’s not Kraft macaroni and cheese, but our own homemade version. It has a heavy cheese sauce-”
“I love homemade macaroni and cheese,” H- interrupted.
Again, the waitress smiled. As did the dad.
“I need a few more minutes,” he said, “but you can bring hers out whenever.”
“Okay.”
Minutes elapsed as H- and her dad partook in their respective lunches during spring break.
H- broke the silence and smartly volunteered, “I should eat all my macaroni and cheese before the strawberries, right?”
Smiling, her dad answered, “Right.”
A few more minutes of diligence on H-‘s part passed.
“You really should eat more, H-.”
“Eat? Look at my tummy. It’s so full,” she began, attempting to stick her non-existent belly out. Then, as if realizing she may be her own worst enemy, she added with determined eyes, “But not too full for dessert.”
“It’s not even big, H-,” he answered, rolling his eyes at the four year old’s endeavor.
“Do you know what a pooch is, Daddy?”
He didn’t want to let her see his shock at her question, so he delicately, though quickly, shifted his eyes from hers to something a few inches away. “Pooch?” he thought. “Why does my daughter know what a pooch is? What moron–no, what mother fucker is using the word pooch around little girls? As if little girls don’t have enough bullshit to worry about in this world, some knucklehead is even now ruining their already set-up-for-failure image innocence. Never again will I let her out of my sight-”
“It’s a dog!”
He turned. Relief? Alleviation, perhaps? Mitigation? Easement? None of these words capture the feeling this answer gave him.
“Maybe the world’s not such a terrible place,” he thought.
eWasteOfMoneyEee
“Just what does he put on his eHarmony profile?”
Well, for today, I’ll tell you my response to the prompt: “The Most Influential Person In My Life Has Been.”
I wrote:
Leo Tolstoy–I thought I was alone until I read his books. If I have to pick someone alive, then there’s this little girl I know who has a way of turning everything old into something new.
To be clear, panties aren’t dropping like I thought they would. Big surprise.
In any case, here’s the latest example of old-to-new that makes me smile.
Once the sun gets working, Denver has been warm of late. But until they turn it on it’s chilly. So I pick up H- from school yesterday and she’s still wearing the two long sleeve shirts I picked out that morning, one thin one and one fleece. Back in the car it’s slightly warm. Like any good woman she complains. Like any good man her wish is my command. At first I turn up the air conditioning fan one click. With the resultant fan volume increase, I can’t help but visualize pricey gasoline being wastefully poured out over the pavement. Then I remember that its not actually hot out. It’s just hot in the car. So I turn off the a/c and roll down her window a bit.
Little did I know that bliss had been waiting right outside her door. Laughter and giggles ensue as she proceeds to narrate to me in detail how the wind is so strong that she can’t push her tiny hand forward. I check the side-view mirror and sure enough her small hand is tucked back as far as it can go against the door frame, barely breaking the invisible plane that demarcates inside from outside.
Next, she excitedly exclaims that Rarity’s mane and tail are blowing crazily in the wind. Turns out that the pony just finished up in the shower and needed to dry her hair.
Then I remember this little girl is around a quarter polish, so I should have seen this unmitigated joy coming. (In my defense, you never can tell how pronounced the illness will be until after puberty). You see, I grew up laughing at the following joke.
A black guy, a Mexican, and a Polack are being exiled to the desert for the rest of their lives. They each get to bring one thing in unlimited supply. The black guy picks food. The Mexican picks water. The Polack picks a car door so that he can roll down the window when it gets hot.
Like I said, old becomes new. I don’t care if the line doesn’t work. It’s true and it’s funny. I’m keeping it.
The Crumby Face
“Type daddy, type!” H- said.
The pair was finishing up breakfast. That is to say he was finished and had moved on to the laptop and she was diligently using her fork’s four tips to scrape up every last bit of cinnamon roll frosting from his plate, having already completed the chore on hers.
He looked towards her, tapped his skull, and smiled as he said, “I’m thinking of ideas.”
“I’m going to count in my head,” she responded naturally.
“Nice, H-. Do that,” he said, returning to the laptop.
A moment passed before she announced, “Daddy, I’m thinking of ideas,” and in doing so chased away one of his.
He turned.
“Oh yeah?”
He wanted to get frustrated, but a dab of icing and an abnormally large chunk of the roll prevented any emotion from surfacing save head-shaking disbelief.
She hadn’t spilled in ages. She used adult size silverware. She dressed herself, sometimes even expressing gratitude when seeing that what he laid out for her matched. She could lift the piano key lid and make her own music for thirty seconds at a time before tiring. And despite answering, “The dragon talks?” when asked how she liked her dad’s Smaug-turned-Bane stylings, she could even call out sight words as she struggled to get comfortable atop him at bedtime.
But when it came to actually fitting food in her mouth, the battle was lost.
He began a careful examination of the data with high hopes of determining she wasn’t at fault. As she returned his stare, shadows shed light on the explanation. He swung round for a profile view. She matched him.
“Hold still H-,” he excitedly requested. Then he happily declared, “Yep, that’s the problem.”
I mean, could you keep food off of your cheeks if they stuck out farther than your lips?
Dreams Comes True
“Does anyone know who this man is?” asked the teacher with a playful smile. The question proved her worth on many levels. One of the two women in charge of the small class of four and five year old pre-kindergartners, she was about the only diversity these white youngsters ever experienced. And on this occasion her husband, also black, came to the classroom on some errand still wearing his business attire. He towered a healthy six foot two over the seated suburbanites-in-training.
The children shook their heads, revealing that they did not have a clue who the man was.
“M-? Is this your dad?” she joked again at poor M-‘s expense.
M- opened her eyes wide, shook her head in the horizontal plane and verbalized, “No.”
“So no one knows who this man is?” the teacher egged on one last time.
Finally, a beacon of light. Of all children, it was the daughter of Pete Deakon himself–writer of should-be-world-renowned blog post Black People Does Not Exist and self-proclaimed leader of the twenty-first century Renewed Effort to Stop Self-Segregation Movement in America (Denver its origins)–it was his little girl, the beloved H-, that fearlessly raised her hand and said, “I know who he is.”
Naturally, other children began to follow their new leader and place their hands in the air, indicating that they too had come to recognize the man.
Quieting down the kids, the teacher asked, “H-, you know who this man is?”
“He’s Martin Luther King!”
There are instances, as rare as double rainbows and three wolf moons, where the lines between our concept of pure joy and the reality of it blur. This is one of them. Take a moment, then, and join me in both picturing and experiencing the delight of the adults present in that classroom last week.
The man did not disappoint, by the way. He looked down at H- and declared, “I do have a dream.”
Captain’s Log 