They are walking again…
Every day, sometimes more than once per day, he takes her for a walk. I don’t know their names. I do know where they live. Around the corner from me, I see them. A sweet family of three, they sometimes walk as a family and they chit chat and laugh and play games of I spy, but usually it is just the two of them passing my house.
Someday, she may be a classmate of another dad’s daughter who also walks by my house most every day. I know they too live close, but I have seen something remarkable from the beginning of their parenting journey’s. How they daddy their daughters as they walk past my house has always been very different.
This daddy, has talked to his daughter throughout every walk. He accompanies her on her walks, even when in a stroller before she could speak, he shows her the birds, they look at rocks and clouds, he follows her pace, they hold hands and are engaged the entire walk. I can hear them through my window have lively conversations. I watched them recently leave their house on my way to work. There is a four way stop sign, so I have to stop. She hurried out first and he stopped to lock the door. She was a few steps ahead and she turned and slowed her steps to wait for him and be sure he was following her. They are together. He sings her sing songs and talks to her.
The other daddy is on the cell phone non-stop. I have never heard him speak to his child, not when they were in the stroller or now walking in front of him. He is there, but not really. I realize, I see these two dads only as they go by my house, but that it is significant for they have no clue I can see them and they are just being themselves.
I notice this because, my dad has always walked really fast and never with me. I felt like I spent my whole life trying to walk beside him, to catch up, to be next to him. Once I was old enough, I used to sing him the song, “Daddy don’t you walk so fast!” when he would get too far ahead of my brother and I. His hands were huge, and I knew he rarely wanted to hold my hand. I slowed him down, my brother and I were poking along and the angle was probably awkward for him, but I wanted him to slow down and walk and talk with us. I surely did poke along and I sang to the birds, knew all the words to songs that made him crazy and I was probably keeping him from some task or project he needed to do. When my brother and I were this age, dad was working two jobs and going to get his master’s degree at Ohio State. We were so proud of him, but he was on the outskirts of our daily lives. He tried, but it was like a language he was unable to allow himself to speak. He couldn’t be silly with us or play. He could only work for us to have a better life. I respected that as I grew, but I feared him too. We didn’t know each other very well.
Today, we are better. We talk, text or check-in much more frequently. We know a little more about each other and our shared story. We walk along together today much better than in the past, on our shared journey.
Parenting is not just about all the big things. Parenting is in the little things. Do you know their favorite color today? Have you danced a silly dance today? Crossed the street looking both ways in an exaggerated fashion so she learns how to do it? You know all those rocks and sticks you pick up and the adventures of stories shared and simple chats and bath time and tuck ins and tantrums and cuddles, how you react to a C, D or F and not an A, and how you must listen to both sides first, all of that is parenting!
I have NEVER seen this dad on a phone or rushing her. He is accompanying her on the journey, slowing the pace and quickening. Stopping and discovering, walking side by side, they walk around the block, together. 
People Collector 
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