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Family Time
Taking Time Out To Brag About My Daughter On Her Birthday
Do you know where you were 30 years ago today? I do!
“No such thing as tomorrow, all we want
- Got The Time, performed by Anthrax
On this day 30 years ago just as the sun was rising I became a Dad.
I had originally been given naming duties, but that was taken away when I landed on “Echo Echo.” Instead, I was relegated to coming up with a middle name. If she had been a boy, her mom had picked “Justin,” so I was vacillating between “Case” and “Time.” The girl’s name her mother had picked was “Rebecca,” which I paired with “Taylor,” naming her after the drummer in my favorite band, Queen.
Becca, as her daycare friends nicknamed her, was a strong, independent child. When she was little she liked to wear “worker boots” with dresses that had passed “the spin test.” She and her Barbies played with her Hot Wheels Cars.
Our favorite place to hang out as a family was Disneyland and as she got bigger she impatiently waited till she would be tall enough to tackle Space Mountain. When the day finally arrived, we got a baby swap ticket so that her mother could stay with her little brother and we embarked on our first trip to outer space.
Upon landing back at the station, I found out that she had an accident and took her to the bathroom to clean her up. When we were finished I told her that I would stay with her and her brother as their mom got to ride. She burst into tears: “But you said I would get to go with Mom too.”
I was puzzled as I thought she would be too scared to go for another round. She set me straight: “It’s OK. I know what to expect now.”
This independence was maintained as she grew to play baseball with the boys through middle school. I remember the first time she got hit by a pitch. The ball struck her in the lower back and she went down, the wind knocked out of her. When she managed to get back up the coach told her he would send a runner to first base for her. What was her response? “I got hit, why don’t I get to run?”
