I have a daughter, Ashley, who is thirty-four and a granddaughter, Bella, who is five years old. For all practical purposes I am Bella’s father also. Over the recent holiday my oldest daughter told me as I was going to bed that she couldn’t wait to see and experience Bella when she is grown up. Ashley explained that when she was five she was a bit afraid of me…I wasn’t very patient…I wasn’t as kind as I could have been. In a backhanded kind of way Ashley was telling me that I’m a better dad now than when she was a child. I guess I’m glad to know that even if hearing it stung me a bit.

I have a son, Nick, who is thirty. I watch him and I see myself when I was his age. He has a wife, a young daughter, a promising career, and is soon to have a fat mortgage. He goes to a lot more trouble to stay connected to me than I ever did with my dad when he was alive. He calls me on the phone just to see and ask “what’s up?” He called me recently and asked “what’s up?” I told him I was in the grocery store with Bella. He asked why I didn’t leave Bella at home. I take Bella with me everywhere I can. She talks to me. She is honest and transparent with me. She talks to me from her heart…..what can I say, she’s five and doesn’t know any better. To be fair, I sometimes have to redirect some stuff she articulates to her Gigi, my wife. I have three grown daughters. I know what’s coming. I lost each one of them to the world that exists outside of my house. The process of recovering them was hard….painful…at times hopeless…on going. Here’s the hard truth…my sons and daughters have scars on their hearts. To some extent they are broken. I think about how much of their damage is because of me and my ineptitude as a father. How much of what’s wrong is just the natural result of their own bad choices? I don’t think knowing the difference would matter. Living with the questions haunts me. When I was asked why I didn’t leave Bella at home, maybe a more truthful answer would have been that I’m trying to redeem myself. Be the man now I should have been before. With intention and purpose I will plant my roots deep in Bella’s heart. I will be kind….patient…..approachable. When she is eighteen I want her to love me like she does today. My wife and I have paid dearly with heartbreak for this chance…this blessing…this boon.

I sat at the dining room table with Bella while her Gigi was on the phone in the kitchen. Gigi was talking to my middle daughter Nicoleta about buying a house. My attention was divided between Bella and the phone conversation in the kitchen. Bella had a look on her face…a sadness…that demanded I pay attention.

“Do you have something on your mind Bella?”

“Can we have a big talk Boss?”

“Tell me why your face is so sad.”

“I don’t know if I can say, why don’t you tell me something first.”

I didn’t have anything particular on my mind in the moment but I shared with her that when I take a lot of days off from work like I have recently I get worried about going back because it’s always a big mess when I get there.

“What will you do when find the big mess?”

“I’ll clean it up…I guess.”

“You’re gonna have to suck it up, right Boss.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She asked me if I had anything else on my mind….I didn’t.

“Why is your face so sad?”

“I had a bad dream.”

It was just after dinner and it seemed strange that she didn’t start the day with her dream recital.

“Did you have the dream last night?”

“No, I had the dream around the time when Coco got married.”

Coco is what Bella calls Nicoleta, her aunt….my middle daughter. The wedding was in November.

“Why have you waited so long to tell me about this?”

“I didn’t want to….it’s very sad to me.”

“Tell me the dream.”

“I was with Memaw at Taco Bell in the drive through line. I asked her if I could get out of the car while we waited and she said yes…..so I got out of the car.”

Memaw is Bella’s great grandmother…my mother in law who passed away two months before the wedding…before the dream.

“So Memaw said it was okay to get out of the car while you were in the drive through line!?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then what happened?”

“The cars in the line started to move….I got more and more behind….Memaw got the food from the window….she left me at the Taco Bell…she forgot about me and left me.”

Bella knows that dreams aren’t real. We have good ones and bad ones. I explained that she didn’t have to carry this sadness because we all know that Memaw would never leave her behind. Bella wasn’t listening…..yet. There was more to tell.

“After Memaw left me at the Taco Bell, I had to live there. They let me have one soft taco and a small drink everyday…..but that was it….nothing else. One day while I was living at the Taco Bell I saw you and Gigi in the drive through line. You guys didn’t see me so I ran outside so that you could pick me up but I missed you and you drove away. Later I had to move out of the Taco Bell because someone dropped a Mentos mint into a drink and it exploded the whole building. Now I was homeless. I found a tree and leaned sticks against it to make a small house….but a tornado came and blew it all away.”

As I go back and read Bella’s dream…on the surface it’s almost funny…but there was something I left out. I have learned something about parenting girls. Much of the time they used their tears for effect….to create drama and theater….to manipulate. If it’s not too much trouble read Bella’s dream again but this time there are tears streaming…..streaming…..streaming down her face onto the dining room table. There were no sniffles…no choking up….just the tears and her words.

Bella came over to sit on my lap. I tried to reassure her that her dream wasn’t true….her Memaw would have never left her behind. Her Boss and Gigi would have found her.

“I know my dream isn’t real Boss….but my sad heart is.”

What do I do with that? Bella misses her Memaw. Beneath that she misses her mom. Somewhere in her mind a logical fear arises and points to the day when I become someone else who leaves her.