Although I still think there’s still a decent way to go, at one point, father-daughter coffee won’t be the thing anymore and I’m going to miss it too.
SmartSapps and I had a lot of fun together and as he got older we thought about what else he noticed and how he interacted with the progress of the world. But there will be "flipping" at one point, when Daddy doesn't have enough appeal and he'll do something else instead of spending time with me.
Once standing tall, I would be bound in the background, only called when there is a need to walk somewhere or while walking, as a talking (but unaltered) wallet.
For now though - I will try to enjoy the moments I have with my little girl. But he is also noticing.
By the time I got up at five, I knew he was going to be pretty tired, and since my wife needed some time to take care of some paperwork, I took a short walk to town in the afternoon. When we woke up at the shopping center Carpark I woke him up and he asked,
"Dad, can you carry me?"
Of course.
But when we were walking and he was more fully awake in my arms. He said how much he was growing and how fast I couldn’t carry him at all.
It's funny. A lot of times when he was a kid I just didn’t want to hold him, after a few hours. Now, I don’t want him to go and get him down to the ground.
Don't get me wrong. I want him to grow up and be everything he can be. As a highly biased parent, I think he is incredible. But still ... it's happening so fast, faster than I'm getting old myself. It’s going to lose alignment like our time line and I’m slowing down, while he’s speeding up.
Every day he forgets to be a little more childish, forgetting to pronounce a word incorrectly or to misspell his grammar. Every day, he gets the other thing right and introduces new mistakes. But I know that eventually, he will grow out of what a father can teach, and I will become unnecessary in his practical life with only the feeling of being tied together in our real life.
What if the bond is not strong enough?
I thought a lot about this. Do I spend enough time with him, what is our quality time spent. Will he remember any of these?
It’s too early to say and the future is always uncertain, so there’s no way to predict how she’ll change when she grows up and how she’ll see her first experiences when she looks back. I hope she got the feeling that she was happy, that she was cared for and supported and of course she had love.
There are still a few years left until my inevitable fate as a parent, but now I will always be his father, no matter what. There will be many times when he will want to deny me, push me away. But he will always fail. I'll just stand by him until I can just stand tall. But I can't stand it at all.
I will be with her past, a part of her life as she has learned from me, good-evil, whatever she loves within herself, and something she despises. But there it will undeniably connect with us forever.