One of these days, I am going to say no.

But when she looks at me with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, how can I? Every time, ever since she was first born, she could wind me around her tiny little porcelain finger. That’s not a bad thing, right? Every father should love his little girl like the princess that she is.
Even when she was yelling at me, my heart always seemed to melt. I didn’t show that of course. Dad face was firmly in place. But inside, all I wanted to do was make her happy. And sometimes you have to do that the hard way. If I gave her everything, how awesome would she turn out? Probably a spoiled rotten brat, which doesn’t really work if you are supposed to be raising a princess. No one likes a spoiled princess. I want to have one of those regal, special, kind princesses for a daughter. You know, one like my wife.
It got harder as she got into her teen years. She started wanting weird stuff. Like her own phone. . . I certainly did not have one of those when I was a kid. Not to mention, what 13-year-old gets their own smart phone? I can barely figure the thing out, let alone see her toting it around like an adult. Too much responsibility in my opinion. That being said, that was one of those moments that she yelled at me, then dissolved into a puddle of tears on the linoleum kitchen floor. I freaked out. Seeing her cry always makes something snap in me. My wife gave me the “back-off-and-let-me-handle-this” look and comforted our daughter while silently shooing me from the room. I returned to my football game on TV. But for some reason, I couldn’t cheer for my team when my princess was in tears. I had to fix it. I didn’t even notice when a touchdown was scored for our team.
That adage about men fixing things for their women and everything that is a nail being able to be fixed with a hammer? It’s true. We love our women so much that we just want to fix things for them. That is the obvious and quickest way to make things better, right? To fix them. It was the hardest thing to sit back and hear my daughter crying and not be able to fix it.
It got late and finally my wife returned. She had that knowing “cat-swallowed-the mouse” look on her face, along with a few tears. Not another crying woman! Despair was eminent. I jumped up from my seat in a panic. “What is it?” I almost gasped.
She burst into a hysterical laugh, shook her head and pushed me back into my chair. My heart rate was through the roof. “Nothing darling, she is just becoming a woman.” She wiped another tear and sat in my lap.
“What?” My little girl, a woman? What was she talking about? She continued to stare into my face, as if waiting for me to understand the importance of what she had just said. I stared back blankly.
After a few moments, she rolled her eyes and patted my shoulder with a hand. “You know honey, a girls hormones can tend to get away with her at certain times. . .” She left her sentence hanging, still looking at me, waiting for me to comprehend what she was trying to say.
Sudden realization hit me. My eyes widened in my face and my heart started beating even harder. Ohhhh! THAT?! And I did the only thing a man who has been married for 15 years can do. I hopped to my feet and steadied her as she had nearly fallen when I made her relinquish her seat on my lap. Resolve was in my every fiber. I could fix this. I had learned much in the last 15 years.
“I’ll get the ice cream.” The perfect hammer for this nail.
My wife laughed.
We spent the evening devouring Death By Chocolate ice cream on our daughter’s bed. Needless to say, no one went to sleep with tears that night.
See. Dad’s can fix things.
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By God’s Grace,
Victoria