Daddy’s Girl

Daddy’s Girl

Dec 20

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I went “home”.  I put this in quotations, since like many of you out there, my parents are divorced and this sense of “home” has never been exactly the same.  You see, I grew up in Florida and my family lives in Kentucky, which for those of you who haven’t been there is effectively another planet.  It’s beautiful but definitely strange. I didn’t have internet access, I couldn’t find a Peet’s coffee and in general felt that civilization as I know it had ceased to exist.  There were highlights though and the biggest was the time I got to spend with my father. I really miss living close to my dad.  He’s an interesting character.  He disguises himself as a dumb hillbilly, when in reality he wrote the computer language that they use to test the relay systems on the space shuttle.  He gave me a piece of the Columbia to carry with me from the fruits of that labor.  He spent tons of time with me as a kid.  He taught me how to play basketball.  He convinced me that geometry was fun.  He instilled a voracious reading habit in me and all other sorts of good things.  When I was a teenager, like all other teenagers, I thought he was the biggest dork on the face of the planet and found him to be an embarrassment.  He’d walk outside of crowded businesses and point up at the sky to see how many people he could get to look and then wandered idly away with a large grin on his face.  He’d go out of the house with a blue and black sock on, because he’s color blind and can’t be bothered with such a petty thing.  However, if you need information on number bases, he can translate numbers like nobodies business.  Want to know what 64 is in hex and octal?  He can tell you but he can’t tell you where his checkbook is located.  He had a bunch of nerdy math/sciene types that hung around the house. They all wore pocket protectors.  I mean seriously, how can a girl expect to have friends with a bunch of pocket protector wearing folks mucking about?  The important thing is that he’s always been there….  He wrote a poem for me when I was little and I had kept the paper for a long time but I unfortunately lost it in my move across the continent.  The good news is that I had it memorized and when Jason and I got married, I surprised him by having it read at the wedding.  The poem has always been something special that I have carried with me, like a mental keepsake.  I thought I would share it here, so without further ado….

Daddy’s Girl

by Larry Dickison

Just sitting here thinking

How unfair life can be to little girls

Especially when all daddy sees is twinkling eyes and gorgeous curls

A little girl who’s growing up

Too quickly for daddy’s eyes

I’ll never admit, not even a bit

That you’re bigger than baby size

When I do, I come to close

To the day that you’ll go away

Some young man stealing from me your heart away

Tonight as I write these words

I cry tears that you’ll never see

But sneak a peak at my heart

Daylight or dark

There they will always be