An open letter to the love of my life

My dear daughter, I’m writing to you on the brink of your sixth birthday.

I don’t think you’re aware of it, but I’ve written about you in my column for years, calling you the two-year-old Egg.

My readers now know you as the five-year-old Egg, but I won’t mention your age in future.

At six, you’re a fully fledged girl, with the unpredictability and, dare I say, mood swings of your gender.

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Which brings me to the issue I want to discuss. You’ve been extremely antagonistic towards your father lately.

Yes, I realise I’m not a girly and that you are painfully aware of your gender. But little girls can’t be that hostile towards their dads.

I picked you up minutes after your birth and looked into your innocent eyes.

I couldn’t see you well – I was too tearfully aware of the miracle in my arms.

I’m the one who braved dirty looks from moms in the queue at the mall bathrooms waiting my turn to change your nappy.

Remember when you told that single mom at the games arcade that your mother is dead?

The lovely Snapdragon didn’t appreciate the story, but little girls and their dads have to have some fun, don’t they?

Remember the forbidden milkshakes at our secret ice cream shop? Or all the movies?

The deep conversations in the bath about dogs and penguins and soap in our eyes?

This morning I went to that little chapel across the road. We all have prayers in our hearts sometimes and need to squeeze them out through bitter lips.

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I was all alone and I knelt on the rustic Afghan rug.

“When you really need something, you have to ask. Do you ever ask?” a woman told me last Sunday.

This morning I asked out of the deepest, most sacred corner of my heart that we could be best friends again.

I asked that you look at me again through those innocent eyes like the day you were born and give me that disarming smile that I live for.

I asked that I could be spared to see you become the great woman I hope you to be.

And that you can always be proud to call me your dad. When you’re six, but also when you are 20.

Because I love you more than life itself.

Love, Your dad.

My son wants to get engaged and it hurts