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A short story titled “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy”

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When my children reached the age of about two years old, as I would come in the door after my day at work, they always came running to me as they yelled, “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” I would bend down when they reached me and would be given super wonderful hugs. Each day, on my drive home, I would think of and look forward to my reward for a hard day’s work. Each of my five daughters would do this until they reached the age of ten or eleven years.  That means Cherie started doing it about 1969 and Angie did it until about 1990. It started with just one girl and for many years I was mobbed by a bunch of girls until it dwindled to one girl again. It was always the highlight of my day but I never fully appreciated it until I had a dream. This dream took place after I was in my sixties but not real long ago. In the dream I came home from work, walked in the door and Cherie, about four or five years old, came running up to me while yelling “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” She threw her arms around me for the hug and I said, “Wait. This isn’t right. You are older and a mom yourself.” She instantly disappeared and I awoke with tears flowing down my face. I wiped them away and in a few moments fell back to sleep. I had the dream again and this time it was Shelley. It was an exact repeat of the first with me again saying, “Wait. This isn’t right. You are older and a mom yourself.” Again, this caused her to disappear resulting in more of my tears. I had that dream about Meridee then Charity and after the Angie dream the sorrow was overwhelming. I have never had the dreams again but have thought about them often and I determined that I never knew when the last time was. It just ended with no announcement like, “Okay daddy, this is the last time I’m going do this.” It was as if my brain needed to mourn the end of these most treasured events so it created a way for me to experience them one last time with each child.  There is no other experience I can have that duplicates the emotion I get from those enthusiastic hugs. I am eloquent and yet I cannot adequately express the euphoria I received from my girls each time they did that.

In the immortal words of that famous huckster, Billy Mays: “But, wait, there’s more!” I have to lay a little groundwork for the rest of the story. When Cherie was fourteen months old we moved to a house on Penn Avenue in Bloomington. In 1975 we moved to a house on Emerson Avenue. The point is that I experienced “Daddy, daddy, daddy” for approximately twenty-one years of which fifteen of those years were in the house on Emerson Avenue. In 2005 I sold that house to my daughter, Shelley. Renee & I later moved to a house on Tenth Avenue. For the last few months now, Shelley has been babysitting Meridee’s three year old daughter, Hope, at the Emerson Avenue house on weekdays. So now, to continue my story.

In the years since, when I go to any one of my daughters’ houses, my younger grandchildren often do that running, yelling and hugging so I get to experience that joy still although now it is not after a day at work. Today though, I stopped at Shelley’s house. When I walked in the back door Hope came running while yelling “Papa, papa, papa” and threw her arms around me. So here I am, in the very same kitchen, standing at the very same door where I had experienced that event with my daughters for fifteen consecutive years even though the last time had occurred twenty-three years ago. I experienced the same euphoric joy while also getting to transcend to my youth