Daddy's Little Girl

I grew up like the average minority family, broken. I spent the majority of my life under the nurturing care of my mother. My dad was on and off throughout my life. But I was lucky – if you want to call it lucky – because, “unfortunately”, my younger siblings saw even less of him during their childhood. You see, for about half of my life my dad would stick around for about three years, leave three years, come back for another, and, finally, he just started another family of his own and I really didn’t see him often after that last segment. Personally, if feel that I had the unfortunate short end of the stick because I became vulnerable twice, and twice was my heart torn apart – the last time into even more pieces than the time before. But who can blame me? I was so young and I yearned for the protection, love, and father-daughter moments that a dad is suppose to provide for his little girl.

While he was around, I must say, we had a lot of those moments together. He was the one who lead me to develop this passion I once had for basketball. He was my coach for a season and I remember the before-hour and after-hour practices: dribbling drills, suicides, shooting drills, you name it. He also taught me how to physically defend myself; he would use his arm (which was pretty huge and solid) as a punching bag and just let me go at it. He would shout, “harder, harder!” He would make sure that my feet were positioned right and I was forming my fist correctly so that I wouldn’t end up hurting myself. But what I loved most was at the end of the day, after all of the drilling and practicing, he would always put him arm around me and call me his little girl. That was so reassuring to me. By that statement I knew that he loved me and would always be there for me. But, I guess things aren’t always what they seem to be at the moment. That’s what they are to me now, just moments of a life I always wished for, memories of a life that barely existed.

It was difficult for me to adjust to the fact that dad was gone when he left the initial time (the first time that I remember). But I got use to it. However, it was so easy to receive him when he returned. Although, the last time he departed was a completely different story. I rejected all phone calls from him for an entire year! I felt as if he didn’t care about my siblings and I. I felt like he was playing with our emotions and that he was so selfish. I hated him for doing this to our family and for causing my mom to suffer. I was so furious, frustrated and disgusted by the very thought of him…so I did what made sense, I disowned him. Our relationship was so severed from that incident that I didn’t even tell him I got married - he was informed by a third party about a month or so after the fact.

I feel that I was kind of robbed of a portion of my childhood because I was forced to mentally grow up faster than the normal adolescent. My dad was a hot head and my mom wasn’t (and still isn’t) one to take his mess – or anybody’s for that matter. So, being the eldest child, my obligation was to console my younger brothers and sisters. I had to be strong for them so that when they looked at me they too could find strength and be reassured that everything will be all right.

As I became older, I realized that holding such a heavy grudge in my heart was unhealthy for me; hatred is so unhealthy. It hurts you more than the person you feel hate towards. Therefore I came to the conclusion that I need to forgive him for what he’s done because all those things have passed. It took a while, but I finally did. We are in the process of rebuilding our relationship now and he is making a huge effort to be in my brother’s life, which makes me even happier. I respect my father, I always have. What can I say; I’m his little girl.


- Cairesse Grimes