mine always took the time

A PSA from the White House's fatherhood initiative



I love this.

I've always been a daddy's girl. My parents still tell the story of the day I was born and how my father kept telling my mother, "Hon, I just gotta go see here again" as he ran off every few minutes to go look at me hanging out with the other adorable newborns.

I'm sure there are plenty of biological and / or psychological reasons for the closeness a lot of fathers and daughters share but for me, I've simply always felt a closer bond with my father. When I was young, I couldn't explain it beyond, "I like Dad better" (not that I ever said that aloud. And not that our father/daughter relationship can be that simplified nor my relationship with my mother that minimized). But as I got older, I grew to realize that I have more in common with my father than I do with my mother. I have a lot of his more desirable traits and more of her less than desirable ones. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, I think I distanced myself from my mother because I saw in her the things I'd hoped I wouldn't see in myself as I grew up. In my father, I saw all the things I'd hoped I would be when I grew up.

They both were perfectly good parents and they played an active role in my brother's and my life. But my father drove my giddy friends and I from house to house. He dropped us off at the Debbie Gibson concert, picked us up when it was over and put up with our incessant talking and giggling in the car. He was the one to come out to the living room and without scolding, reminded us that our sleepovers needed to involve not only talking and laughing and television but also a little bit of sleeping. He did those little things everyday.

I love that this ad doesn't scream, "look how silly a man looks playing dress up, even if it is with his daughter!" And it's not an ad depicting a father tossing the football around or playing catch with his equally as "manly" son. It simply looks like the father is having a genuinely good time hanging out with his daughter doing something she enjoys.

I wasn't a cheerleader kind of young girl. But had I been, I have no doubt in the world my father would have been out there helping me practice. And I have no doubt we would have been equally as adorable as the father and daughter in this PSA.