Bitter Grapes

This weekend, Justice sat down to write her father a letter.

At this point, unless you want to wait three years, I wouldn't suggest commissioning her to write any marketing or blog copy for you. It's not that it was bad, it's just that her typing skills amount to the hunting and pecking of a blind and beakless woodpecker who is also dead.

She wrote a grand total of fifteen lines and it took her the better part of three hours. Worse, I thought kids today were all internet-computer-VCR-DVD-TiVo-savvy giants who kicked copies of Unix in my generation's face every time we go to the beach. Justice wanted to move the body of the text down, and so she kept deleting it and then hitting enter and re-typing.

The upside of this process was that it took her three hours to type it, which left Lil and I in the enviable position of watching Thank You for Smoking (a cunning movie that you should run right out now and see). The downside was that she kept yelling frustrastions at us:

"Where's the shift . . . oh, nevermind!"
"I can't find the key with the two dots on it!"
"How do I put the date in?"
"How do you spell "abandoned"?"

Good times, let me assure you.

We did not, of course, leave her to suffer in misery and defeat through these frustrations. Lil's computer cost quite a bit, and a ten year-old can do significant damage, even if they don't know what they're doing. Instead, we helped her out, talked about the "home row" for which she became eternally and utterly lost, and then told her to just type out the words she had written down and we would fix it later.

But as I read through her letter, which ammounted to Justice's resume to date:

I have brown eyes. I have big hands and big feet. I'm in the fourth grade.

I was struck my her salutation: Dead Daddy.

I have often expressed how children do not understand the sweeping effort that goes into their creation, delivery and upbringing. The clear amount of frustration and self-sacrifice that every child (should) takes for granted. The mind of the child is not geared toward this kind of understanding that will later, if the parental-unit is fortunate, occur to them when they go to college or move out for the first time.

While not joyous, it is understandable.

A child's mind is geared toward playing, eating and playing.

They don't consider bills, mortgages, private schools, tutors, after school programs, etc.

And yet, I have to say, that there are times when the parents' grievances are supremely legitimate, righteous and wholly correct. The term "daddy" applied to a man that Justice, for all intents and purposes has never met, truly did strike me right to the core like a Brunnhilde's spear. But Aesop's bitter grapes only lingered for a moment. There have been many, many wonderful moments of having Justice as a part of our house and our lives. Tears, frustrations, anger a-plenty, sure. But seeing her grow up, and learn and experience has been worthwhile as well.

So while Justice's preconception of her father, her daddy, is probably all light and happiness, the reality will likely deminish that greatly. Still, having met the man, I can tell that he, like me, knows what it is to be a father, to be a daddy. He just gets the title.