Daddy's Girl

I grew up in a household with three brothers, two older, one younger.  My oldest brother is 3.5 years older, the next brother is 2.5 years older and my younger brother is about 3.5 years younger.  I am one of the middle children, 3rd in line for food.  The only girl.  Growing up I played every sport imaginable.  From learn to skate, figure skating, gymnastics, softball, basketball and soccer.  Back yard touch football was great fun for me with my brothers until the day one of them fell on me and fractured my thumb, but the list of injuries goes on with me.  It's not to say I was injured alot, but when I was they were injuries I could be proud of.  Skateboarding down the hill of my street, showing off in front of the neighborhood kids until I got going too fast on that plastic narrow skateboard and wiped out leaving a scar on my back to this day.  Ah, but what a good story it was to tell. 

I was a bit of a tomboy if you haven't already figured that out.  Well with three brothers how could I not be?  I had to keep up with the boys, if they could do it then you could bet that I wanted to do whatever it was too.  When I was about 7 my father asked me if I wanted to play ice hockey, I said no but a few years later I asked to play and he said no.  "Why?" I asked, "because I said so" he said.  That was a common answer from my parents, one that I'm sure I will use when I just don't have an answer or I just don't feel like explaining myself.  I later figured out that he was afraid of me getting hurt, his little girl.  Many people have often said to me "oh you're an only girl you must have been Daddy's girl".  "No" is all I would reply, thinking to myself if you knew my father you wouldn't even ask that question.  

My father was what I would call a "man's man";  loved to be with "the boys".  And when I say "the boys" I mean any male not just my brothers or his male friends, he was just used to being around guys.  I'm not sure he knew what to do with me other than put me in sport after sport after sport just like his boys.  Don't get me wrong, I am so very lucky to have been able to have had the opportunities I had.  Imagine if I didn't know how to skate, or shoot a basketball or kick a soccer ball, I can't.  We were very lucky and even now I can throw on a pair of skates (hockey-I can't stand the toe pick on those figure skates!haha) and skate like I was a kid just yesterday and I love it. 

I think I excelled in the sports I played because of the support I had from my parents and the way I was pushed by my father to always be aggressive.  Playing soccer in high school he would run up the field on the sidelines with me while I had the ball, sounds crazy but he did, it makes me laugh to think about it now.  And the one year I went to college in New York 5 hours from home, homesick as ever, I stepped off the bus in Philadelphia for an away game only to see my father and his best friend standing on the curb smiling at me.  They had hopped a plane last minute and flown to PA to see me play soccer.  I have never felt so loved and so missed.

My father and I, we butted heads a lot, we were both very stubborn, I still am.  He passed away in 2003 and not a day goes by that I don't think about him and the tears they still come, 9 years later.  He never got to meet my husband, or my daughter.  Now my daughter, she's wonderful and she's the apple of my eye and her Daddy's eye.  I would love for her to play every sport she wants to and I hope that she will be a mommy's girl AND a Daddy's girl.  The video above is a song my father loved that we danced together to.  I miss you Dad, I love you.