"What's that cloud in the sky?"
"That's not a cloud, that's The Milky Way"
"What's that?"
"Well, you know what the sun is, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, The Milky Way is a whole bunch of suns. They're just so far away that they look like a big, milky cloud. In fact, a long time ago someone looked up up in the sky and thought that someone, some god, had spilled milk in the sky."
"Dad?"
"Mmm hmm?"
"Is that really what happened?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Wow"
She doesn't
remember that conversation, nor many others that we
had during the ten-year
span I was the biggest
man in her
life.
She has a legal father now, not the one who abandoned her, but the one that adopted her when her mother got re-married. She has his name ... he is, and always has been, Dad.
And as she grows closer to the age of eighteen, any legal or societal duties I might be called upon to perform as her godfather become less and less.
She doesn't remember calling me Dad, but she remembers the stars.
I know. On a recent, all too brief visit ...
I caught her looking.
Wow