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Choose love when your 6-year old gets chicken pox and throws off all of your summer vacation plans.  Choose love when your 8-year old slips and then rips your pants right down the back pocket seams because she was holding onto them while learning how to ice skate.  Choose love when your 10-year drops the overpriced, swirly lollipop at Disneyland that you just bought her ten minutes ago.  Choose love when your 14-year old accuses you of not caring about her life.  Choose love when your 16-year old pretends not to know who you are in public.

Choose love, my friend.

Choose to love her hard and well and every day, though you will most certainly not receive a full return on your investment, in this life.

Do this, however, and do it right and she will continue to eat foot-long veggie patties with no onions from Subway, just because that’s what you two ate every Saturday after dance.  She will love to listen to solo pianists because that’s what you played.  She will build things because that’s what you guys enjoyed doing together.  She will travel with your blue backpack because she’s got your pioneering spirit and adventurous personality and will continue to create things because that’s the gift you have encouraged within her.  And she will strive to the best spouse and parent and human being that she can be because that’s who you were.  And every day up until then and thereafter, she will choose love.  And she will love.  Because that’s what you did.  She will love well and always because you first loved her.

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The full range, extent, and gravity of gratitude may not have reached your ears, Dad, but the ripples of your love continue to move onward and outward.  XOXO