She Said What?

The fam and I went swimming over the weekend.  FYI, my girls would swim 24/7 given the opportunity.  They have been know to be in a swimming pool for 8 hours straight.  They have never even hinted that they were ready to go home. 

Anywho, the girls and I have a series of games that we play.  One is where one of us is on one side of the pool giving clues about something and the rest of us have to guess.  When we think we know, we have to swim across the pool and guess.  If wrong, we have to swim back.  I, as I am prone to do, ruin the integrity of the game by constantly swimming back and forth guessing random things.  (Item #412 on the list “Things Maylee and Lauren Will Have to Explain to Their Therapist”)

Maylee is “it” and gives the following clues:

This is a person

He has black hair

He is somone I admire more than anyone

He is my role model in everything

At this point, Lauren takes off swimming and guesses “Daddy.”  Maylee says that is right.  I am stunned.  Why?  Because I think it’s awesome that Maylee would still describe my mostly salt, salt-n-pepper hair as black.

Seriously, what did she just say?  I am whom she admires most in the world?  Role model in everything?  I can’t accurately explain the conflicted feelings of pride and absolute fear that I felt in that moment.  Now mind you, I have taught on numerous occasions to dads that what she said is what kids believe.  Even daughters, perhaps especially daughters.  It’s one thing to teach it to other people, it is another thing entirely to hear those words come out of my daughter’s mouth and to have the other daughter so quickly guess it.

Everything that I do is being watched.  Everything I say or do is being put into the category of “that’s the way to talk and act.”  Everything.  I’m sure that she has a filter to filter out the bad things that she hears me say or do, but I’m guessing that each one of those breaks her heart and/or confuses her in some way.  “Easy, Cloften, that’s way too much pressure.   Get back to what I came here for: mediocre cynical, humorous obervations about life and pop culture.”  I know that it’s a lot of pressure.  Believe me, I know.  The pressure is not from me though.  It is from your kids.  We would all do well to feel some of that pressure and do our best to live up to it.  We would also do well to learn to depend on a God who loves us and is helping us become like his son, Jesus, and to point our children to that same God.  Remember, though God is described very often as Father, so it continues to boomerang back on you dads.

On the positive side, though, our kids do look at us through rose colored glasses.  How do I know?  She said I have black hair.