Back in the late 1980’s, Sue and I bought the video “Savannah Smiles”; A kids’ movie about a little girl who accidentally gets mixed up with a couple of escaped cons and steals their hearts. I had seen it in theatres earlier, so I knew what was coming, but by the final scene I was crying like a little kid. Steve Martin’s “Father of the Bride” has the same effect on me, as does the Paul Simon song “Father and Daughter”. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmIvHxBG1DU ) The fact that Naomi chose this song for her senior slide show when she graduated from high school causes it to tug all the more on my heart strings. There is something very precious about a father– daughter relationship.
On Monday, we will be taking our two oldest girls back to Nyack College, located just over the Tappan Zee Bridge from New York City. This summer will probably be the last one in which our family of five will all be together. Next summer Jo, our 20 year old, will need to do an internship, and it looks like she’ll be doing it in an orphanage in Gabon, on the west coast of Africa. The next summer will be Naomi’s turn. Hers would not need to be on the foreign mission field, but it wouldn’t likely be in Bridgton, Maine either. When I think about this, it creates the same feelings I got when Savannah had to say good-bye to the newly transformed cons or when Steve Martin shot baskets in the driveway with his daughter the night before her wedding.
But this morning our youngest daughter, Rose and I had one of those never-to-be-forgotten times together. She came into school with me today to help me set up my class’s terrarium. We measured its dimensions so we knew how much sod we needed, dug the sod, created a small ‘pond’ for our catches, then went hunting. Rose caught a frog barehanded, along with two salamanders. Together we caught a praying mantis, millipede, worms, and plenty of grasshoppers for our predators to eat between now and when school officially opens on Tuesday. We talked about how cool it will be when we get our first snake of the year, reminisced about a couple of snake escapes from school years past, described to each other how catlike toads are when they hunt, marveled at the beauty of the woods adjacent to our school where we were having this adventure, and ended up getting really dirty together. Rose even ‘accidentally’ went up to her ankles in a swamp.
The terrarium is now set up on my classroom desk, I’m home at my kitchen table writing this blog, and Rose is listening to her sister’s “Beach Boys In Concert” CD. This is what being a dad to a 10 year old girl is all about.