She Read To Me

She Read To Me

John Paul Derryberry

I lay on one of my daughter's floors. I was doing my best actor routine of being a baby as my daughter was babysitting me. I would not have won an Oscar for my performance, but I could have won an Emmy. As I lay on the floor, my daughter informed me that it was reading time and allowed me to choose from three different books. Of course, I pick the Daddy Book. It's the best book ever for girls to read about their dads. I may be a smidge biased about that. As my youngest read the book, I was taken aback by the role reversal.

It's what you want from your little ones—to eventually grow and show what type of person they are becoming. As my youngest read and pretended to babysit me, the care she put into doing so with such compassion and care was heart-tugging. I hope it was a reflection of what she has seen from my wife and me in caring for her. The time we put into parenting is long. So long that we sometimes can not tell if we are bending it toward producing a good person. We just have to hope and believe we are.

As she carefully made sure she didn't miss a page and that I understood everything, I had some confirmation that up until now, we have to be doing something right with this little lady. With how quickly time goes with kids, it was nice to have a moment of clarification about our relationship and who she is becoming. I often feel as adults, we forget how hard it is to grow up. Experiencing so many new life moments and emotions with such little knowledge of life has to be exhausting and confusing. Yet, somehow, with some help, encouragement, and guidance, they can figure out how to conquer any life problem.

It's magical; the correct parental love can be a foundation for our little ones. They take that foundation and run with it. Even parts of the foundation that reveal our best moments as parents can be profound for the little ones, not in a bad way. In even adults screw up and fix things. So I lay there and allowed my youngest to take care of me, to be fully present with her as she read the best book ever. I saw a little lady allowing the better parts of her personality to emerge. And really, that is all we can hope for everyone we interact with. That our good parts win out over our bad parts. As she read, I realized we are on our way to something great as long as we keep it up.