Growing Up

She has always favored her dad. There’s no argument about it. My older daughter looks just like me so it’s only fair. Through the years I’ve occasionally sat across from them in restaurants and marveled. Not only at the physical resemblance but at the body language, the tilt of the head. The twinkle in the eye.

It’s uncanny.

Last night was one of those nights where I sat across from them at Mission Barbecue and saw it again. And thought about how she will be eighteen in less than a month. I watched as they discussed a music composition she is working on for school. I smiled as he asked her how something on his phone works and the two of them bent their heads over it as she explained the finer points.

And then, over their shoulders, a television on the wall caught my eye. It was showing this ad:

https://youtu.be/7iZfaep_LS4

It’s a Travelers Insurance spot called “Growing Up”.

She has always been her father’s daughter. Neither one of them are big criers. They keep a lot on the inside but, boy, is there a lot going on in there. But something about this ad, and at that particular moment...

I got teary. I had to look away.

My two don’t have a Travelers Insurance, “I’ll always dry your tears” relationship. But the bond they have is deep, and every bit as beautiful. He bought her very first train set when I said she was too young for trains because it had a voice activation component that would encourage her to talk.

He just knew.

He has been encouraging her to do for herself from her earliest years. And he has sometimes had to remind me that she really can do it, and that I need to let her.

Let her try. Let her fly.

All you fathers of daughters out there, I see you. You don’t have to be like the dad in the ad but for heaven’s sake, just keep doing what you do.