Magoo loves Roald Dahl books. She has devoured every single one she has come into contact with. Today she opened up The Witches for the first time and was reading it in the car on the way home from our Father’s Day festivities.
TJ took the girls up to put them to bed, and all of a sudden Magoo walked into the kitchen where I was. She had tears streaming down her face. I asked her what was the matter.
She told me that the book starts off saying that it is true, and then it says that American witches put spells on parents to make them eat their children. She was sobbing because she was afraid this was going to happen to us.
I looked at her and sat down and took her in my arms. I explained that not everything we read is true even if it says it is, and then I assured her that no amount of condiments in the world would convince me to eat either her or her sisters.
Finally after a couple of minutes of creating ridiculous scenarios of me at the table with a bib and some ketchup, I got her laughing and convinced her that the story was not true.
She ran upstairs to go to bed, and I sat down with my heart in my throat. I was choking back tears.
There are a lot of big moments with parenting – births, graduations, first steps, birthday parties. Those are all fun and special and momentous. But the moments that mean the most to me are these little ordinary ones.
The ones where I have to console a scared child after a nightmare.
The ones where I get to see them run up to me with such pride and show me their latest creation.
The ones that are raw and real and vulnerable. The ones that highlight who I am to them and who they are to me. The ones that remind me that a parent can’t be replaced. That it’s the one single role in life that no one can step in and truly do the same job.
And then I look over at my husband. We are partners in this endeavor of life, and yet our lives look so different. I spend my days in the trenches, and he spends his days too far away working hard hours missing the trenches.
But I look at him and I see him looking at our girls, and I see that in all the world, he is the only other one who understands. He is the only other person in this world who holds these girls that close to his heart.
He sings with them and dances with them and plays games and tells stories. He’s the man in their little lives. And that is a huge responsibility. And he lives up to it and more than excels at it. I’m proud to share my man with my three little ladies. And I consider having him as their father was the greatest gift I could have ever given them.
Once upon a time TJ was the boy who would come visit me in Milwaukee. Then he became my new husband — the one I couldn’t wait to get home to. And now I get to see him through my daughters’ eyes, and it’s a sight I never want to look away from.
And so on Father’s Day, I thank God for my holy moments with my little ones, and I thank God that they have a father who views those moments as every bit as holy as I do.
And I thank God for my dad — the person who taught me what a dad is supposed to be and who thus led me on the path to TJ. And he is also the only other man in my girls’ young lives who they look at with dancing eyes. I see the way my dad looks at them, and I know that the girls have a bullpen. I know that my parents have my back in having their back. The love goes deep.
Our culture in some ways mythologizes moms. Dads sometimes go a bit unnoticed in our culture.
But every girl who ever threw a ball to her dad, and every girl who twirled with him at daddy-daughter dances, and every girl who couldn’t wait to show her dad her wedding dress knows just how important dads are.
They are our first love. The first man we want to marry. And the one we will judge all other men by. I’m so grateful to have such wonderful ones in my life.