Father & Daughter

I suck. Oh, it's true. I do indeed. I've been extremely lax in my writing. Significant things have happened, events have flown by at faster-than-light speeds, and I haven't even attempted to document them, much less explore their impact on me. The most important of which is as follows….

My daughter, my firstborn, the adorable and wicked Sierra Joy, turned 16 on May 24th. She had what amounted to a three-straight-weekend party, culminating with a full-on tea party at the Sherwood Tea House on May 31^st with her closest friends.

(that's her on the far left)

After the festivities, I unveiled my final gift to her: a video compilation of footage and still pictures of her entire life. Let's just say everyone who saw it thought it was amazing. I had originally planned to upload it on YouTube so distant family members could see it, but it ended up being nearly an hour long! I'll likely upload at least the Father & Daughter section, set to the Paul Simon song of the same name (which is kinda our song), to bring tears to the eyes of viewers everywhere.

Speaking of tears, anyone who knows me (well enough) knows that I am an absolute crybaby. Jesus, even those damned Goodwill commercials make me tear up. And don't even get me started on Armageddon, which is a movie that I loathe (as any serious film fan would), but am nonetheless choked up by its overwrought ending. But nothing in the world even comes close to the effect Sierra has on me. Seriously, I can make myself cry at the drop of a hat just by thinking about her. I am unspeakably proud of her, and I've been at her mercy since the day she was born. Two years ago, on Christmas morning, she presented me with a handmade scrapbook detailing our relationship (which, naturally, was the inspiration for the video discussed above), and I cried like a fucking baby (which was, of course, captured on video by Teresa for future blackmailing).

The scrapbook.

I've often tried to figure out why I'm so quick to shed tears when it comes to her…. Nothing hits me so immediately, so viscerally, so deep in the gut. Is it some kind of chemical imbalance? The shadow of a slow-blooming mental illness?

Nah. I just adore my little girl. Inside every father's heart lives a treasured little girl. I'll bet I'm not the only daddy who is moved to tears by the overpowering magic of the father-daughter bond. But if I am… then I'm the luckiest man alive, and the rest of you guys don't know what you're missing.

(Sierra, probably about six months old or so, 1992)

Hey, come to think of it…. Armageddon's weepy ending centers around a daughter losing her father. Damn it, no wonder it makes me cry! See, maybe I'm not such a woman after all.

(Sierra and I on her birthday, May 24, 2008)