Father's Day

Her favorite episode on the Wallace & Gromit DVD is the one about the sheep. You have to skip forward to the fourth track to get to it.
She loves it when you blow up your cheeks really big, let her poke you in the face and wiggle your face back and forth as if you've popped a balloon.
When she's a little bit tired, she'll fight to have mom bring her upstairs. If she's absolutely exhausted, she'll let you carry her up there instead, clinging to you as tightly as she does that blue blanket she loves. You can change her clothes, and she'll seem absolutely out of it. But before you walk out of the room, she'll look up at you, half-asleep, and say, "I love you, Daddy."
These are the moments in the life of a father. I'd really never known much about them. I'd been young and single and painfully oblivious to it all. I never recognized the value in being so important to any one person.
That all changed when I fell in love with Jessica and, by extension, with Lissie. I've become Daddy to someone in the past year.
So I've built up a little bit of anger and resentment toward the man we jokingly call "The Donor" around our house. He called up late last week, saying he wanted to see "her." He wanted to see his daughter. I'm not even sure he knows her name or that she prefers Lissie to Elisabeth.
He never sat through her dance recital. He never held her close and rocked her when she was crying with a boo-boo. He never had to tell her she couldn't have dessert without at least trying the vegetables on our plate.
Truth be told, he hasn't done anything in the last four and a half years for this darling child. And now he wants to be her dad.
I totally understand his urge to be a part of her life. I feel it stronger and stronger every day. Each hug, each kiss on the cheek reinforces what I'd been missing for all those years.
What I don't understand is his feeling on entitlement. He abandoned her and her mom those years ago by refusing to contribute emotionally or financially. He stayed out of her life for all that time.
Now another man comes along who loves and cares for the both of them deeply. She calls out to him, "Hi Daddy" when I return home from work. She'll sit quietly at my office when we need her to do that.
That isn't something that was given to me. It was something that I've earned. I've earned her love. I've earned the right to be called Daddy. We were very careful not to ever introduce that word into her vocabulary. We didn't want her to use it if she didn't feel it. But in the past two to three months, she's said it in such a convincing and wonderful way, I'd be crazy not to soak up its sentiment. She still drops in the occasional David, but her preference is obviously Dad.
And now some other guy, absent for all that time, wants this perfect life of mine.
Perhaps I'm just being selfish. Maybe I can't imagine sharing that distinction with someone else. Maybe I'm afraid she'll like the other guy better if she ever had the chance to know him.
Mostly, though, I think I've learned the responsibility that comes with being a father. It's not just offering the genetics of life. It's offering the wisdom of your experiences. It's offering the courage of your convictions. And most of the time, it's a matter of setting aside your own needs to take care of hers.
It makes me so angry that he'd try calling out of the blue, demanding to come back into her life. It makes me want to lash out violently. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to hide off in a corner so Lissie can't see that I'm bothered by all this.
But then another lesson comes to mind about being a father: Most importantly, it means being there for her, no matter what. So I'll continue on this uncertain path with one thing in mind; she needs me, and I need her. If that's not what being a father is about, it should be.