A Fathers Love

My Daddy always loved me. For as long as I can remember. Mom was never really around, she was always busy doing something else. Something that never seemed to include my dad and me. She didn’t even sleep in the same room as him most of the time – and that was if she was even home, which most of the time she wasn’t.
It was my father who took the time with me. Who loved me and cared for me. Always making sure I had everything I needed, and was properly cared for, provided for and loved. Growing up I had everything a girl could want. The perfect pink room, with all the stuffed animals and dolls I could ask for, with a princess bed, and a bathroom joined to my room. It happened to also go into the room that daddy slept in. Mom’s room was the Master, but he said he didn’t mind, and that it was better this way.
As I got older, Mom was around less and less, and Daddy spent more and more time with me. He always said to anyone who asked that he was making up for my lack-of a mother. I didn’t mind or notice her missing though. I loved my daddy, and that’s all that mattered.

One night before bed as I sat in the bath talking to my Daddy who sat on the floor beside me, I asked why at 10 years old , nearing 11, he still helped me in the bath every night, as most of my girlfriends were at the point where they were embarrassed to even be seen in a full swim suit by their fathers.
He explained that by this point in a girls life, a mother normally takes over, and explains and teaches the young girl of all the things it means to be a woman. And of relationships between men and women, and the changes already happening in my body. He told me that because my own mother wanted no real part in my life, that he new from when I was still an infant that this would fall to him. And he didn’t mind. He was actually happy that it had fallen to him. But because it had fallen on him, he said that he always tried to be really close with me, even when I was little, so that I would always be comfortable around him, and could show and talk to him about anything. Anything at all.
I only really understood part of what he meant by this at this time, but I trusted my Daddy, and knew that he knew what was best for me.
I asked him to teach me right then, but he told me that I had to wait, that even though I was almost 11, I was still a little young to learn everything of being a grown woman, but that he would teach me as the time became right.
I was a little upset at his answer, and asked to get out of the bath right away, so that I could go to bed, read, and think about what he had said. I could tell he was a little disappointed, but as we did every night, he turned the shower on to rinse the bubbles from my bath off as he stood outside the tub getting wet. He then continued to shampoo and rinse my hair, then put in the conditioner. He then lathered up and cleaned my who body, as I was used to before rinsing the conditioner out of my hair, and turning off the water. Then wrapping me in the towel, and holding me as I stepped out so that I wouldn’t slip on the wet floor, he then dried me off, and sent me to my room where I put on my pyjama’s and got into bed.
After about an hour, like normal he came in, kissed me goodnight and turned out all the lights, making sure I was safely tucked in for the night.

And life went on, as it does, continuing much the same way.

A few months later I asked him when he would begin teaching me, as I had been asking about once a week ever since that night in that bath. Finally frustrated with me, he told me “If you want a number so bad, lets say 13. Understood? Do not ask again!”
I was shocked at his outburst, and never did ask again.

Again, life went on.

Shortly after my 12th birthday, I came home to life-changing events. My mom was home, I saw her car in the driveway! This is the first time I had seen her in over a month. I was excited and scared at the same time. For the last 6 months or so, every time she came around it was never good., but none-the-less, she was my mother.
I walked in the door, and instantly knew that this visit wasn’t going to be any better than the last few.