By Chris Preyor
Recently my eleven year-old daughter walked into my office early on a Saturday morning where I was already hard at work on a writing assignment. She walked in already dressed with her shoes on and ready to go. Where, I had no idea. She’s not normally a morning person (she gets it from her momma) so I was a little surprised to see her so bright eyed and bushy tailed at eight thirty in the morning on a Saturday.
“What’s up baby, what are you doing up so early?” I asked her. She walked around to my side of the desk, stood beside me and laid her head on my shoulder. It was at this moment that I knew for certain that the fix was in and even though I knew there was an ask coming, I played along.
“You good?”, I asked her.
“Yeah, I was just wondering…if…could we….would it be possible if…….”
“Just spit it out baby.”
“Can we go for a ride?”
“A ride? A ride where?”
“It doesn’t matter, I just want to go for a ride to get out of the house.”
Now, my brain and my wallet were both screaming at me at this point, “don’t do it! You have 60 more pages to write!” Unfortunately for my brain and my wallet, ever since I became a father, I only take my marching orders from one source, that spot right in the middle of my heart that makes me lose all willpower at the sound of the word “daddy”. The same heart that is completely and unconditionally in the service of daughter #1 and daughter #2. So if my baby says she wants to go for a ride, just to get out the house during a global pandemic quarantine, well dammit it’s time for me to throw on my favorite weekend ensemble (random tee-shirt and jean shorts), grab our Covid-19 face masks and jump in the car and go!
Where we went and how long we were gone isn’t important. The point of this story is that it’s just another example of the most surprising and consistent part of being a father. The innate transformation that most men go through when they stop living their lives for themselves and start living their lives for the sake of their children. It’s a metamorphosis that no one warns you about when you have a child on the way. I assume it’s considered a given that when you have a kid that you’ll make that kid your priority but it’s a little more than that. For me anyway.
If that means I have to stop doing what I’m doing to drive around in the car for an hour, spending a little quality daddy-daughter time, then so be it. Who knows how she’ll remember that morning when she gets older or whether she’ll remember it at all. But if she does, she’ll also remember that when she woke up that morning, she needed her daddy and he was there for her. I won’t be around forever so it’s my job to make sure their lives are filled with those kinds memories. Memories of them needing daddy and daddy being there for them, no matter what it was; an early morning car ride, money, a bodyguard (my favorite role), a bad attempt at a ponytail, advice or a shoulder to cry on. Whatever they need, I want them to know that they can always depend on me. And that’s all I need.
