Graduation

Sunday was my little girl's pre-school graduation concert. Of course I went for it and watched with immense pride as my little one danced away with confidence and enthusiasm. I think she'd been stressing out over it but it's done and done well too. And of course she got to don a mini gown and a cap after to receive her mini diploma. After it was over she ran to me and jumped into my arms.

I remember her concert from just a couple of years back. She lacked confidence and didn't exactly dance with the rest of her class. Then there was the sports day when she got distracted in her race and was chatting to her competitors mid-race.

It seems not long ago and yet an age since my children came into my life. I can look at them and see a slight reflection of myself in them. I have, after all, had a bit of a hand in bringing them up. But it's been easy. They're such good kids that sometimes I fear for them in this great big ugly world. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to them about recycling. It was a little irritating for me that my daughter had been taught about recycling at school but there was no recycling project or bins in her school and she didn't know enough about it. I was explaining paper is made from trees and trees make oxygen and how CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we're already at the tail end of the latest ice age and we need the trees and so many things are made of wood, wood comes from trees and blah blah blah. And they were like okay, daddy's upset, better nod head and absorb the overload. They've come such a long way. I'm so proud of them.

I wonder about the future though. My girl had been looking through old pictures and is wondering who the man holding her in her baby pictures is. She asked her mother. I was there. I could offer no help and no answer. She was told that that man is her father. Perhaps the word 'real' was missing and maybe used if I wasn't there, I don't know. My heart had sunk into my feet and was staying there.

"Two daddies?" Then she asked if father could be found.

Yup. How to tell a six year old and expect her to understand? That the daddy she knows is actually mummy's ex-boyfriend? I made my first appearance in their lives when she was two and a half and he was 18 months. My boy is fine because he knows no other and there are no pictures of him with his real father. Nothing really for him to question.

Yet.

All I can say to my little girl is daddy loves you and always will.

I'm proud you call me your daddy.