Last year, my daughter Pookie’s second grade class held a special event—Donuts With Dads. It’s an annual thing, so I had known about it for a while and I gotta say, I was more than a little curious about how it would go down.
Her real dad lives right here in town, so his attendance was a given. But what about me? I would have been okay if I’d been left out of the mix. Being a stepdad can be tough. Hell, so can being a stepdaughter. I figured that, on some level, this would be a difficult decision for her.
Thankfully it turned out Pookie wanted “both of her dads” to go.
I was obviously thrilled, though I also knew that a certain degree of awkwardness would likely ensue. But as Pookie led her father and me around the classroom on the “scavenger hunt,” I was pleasantly surprised by how skillfully she navigated the situation. It wasn’t awkward at all.
That is, until we went to the far wall to admire the cute drawings the class had made of their dads. My eyes quickly scanned the entire wall until I found the drawing she had made of her biological father, and, well, it’s safe to say that I got the short end of the crayon.
Forget, for a moment, that the left side of my face is bulging out as if experiencing the gravitational pull of a large planet. Forget the certain (though difficult-to-pinpoint) alien element to the depiction. And try to look past the zipper on my fleece (I’m reasonably sure that’s what she was drawing) that looks like Uncle Jed’s shotgun.
Take a gander at my head, more specifically my hair—and disregard the fact that I don’t have a crew cut and that my real hair is not six inches off my ears. Focus instead at the very, very top of my hair.
There are only a handful of explanations.
1. To enhance the aforementioned alien theme, Pookie has drawn a flying saucer which has landed on my head.
2. I’m sporting a flesh-toned yarmulke.
3. Pookie believes that I’m actually a volcano.
4. Pookie’s imagining that I’ve recently undergone a lobotomy.
5. The circle is actually a halo, a symbolic representation of the angelic role I’ve played in Pookie’s life.
6. Or, most likely, that skin-toned circle that is surrounded by hair is Pookie’s artistic rendering of my bald spot.
I suppose that’s how she sees me. And I’m okay with that, even if she did choose to showcase the shortcomings of my pate to each and every one of her classmates (plus their dads).
Especially because her insistence that I be a part of the festivities tells me something else about how she sees me—as her dad.
@lisa — don’t let that drawing fool you. i’m big-time hot.
and thank you! happy thanksgiving!
Bravo! The alien volcano look suits you well. Thanks for writing something that got me to laugh so hard my ribs hurt — yet was poignant and telling as well.
You must be doing something right, aside from teaching her to root for some truly awful teams. 😉 Seriously, I think that it is awesome that she drew your picture.
1) AWESOME that her school has an event like that. So many places (my son’s school included) do special things for the moms but leave out the fathers. Which is all kinds of sad.
2) Being a stepfather may be hard, but you are obviously doing something right.
3) I am a big fan of your writing, though I generally just lurk.
jenn— 1) the event was truly awesome. 2) it is hard, and believe me, sometimes i’m not sure how good of a job i’m doing (at being a stepdad). i was my parents’ only child, though they had both had children from previous marriages which means that they were both stepparents. and i always appreciated, even when i was growing up, how hard it was to be a stepparent. 3) thank you so much! what a nice thing to say. i’m a lurker, too, in that i don’t comment on the vast majority of blogs i read. i really appreciate… Read more »