I’ve run across a fair amount of men (and women) lately that seem to take offense that I call HIM Daddy.  I am curious about this and I would love to hear comments on this, I really really want your opinion on this constant reader.

The journey to being able to call someone other than Lewis Daddy was a fairly long one for me. 

As a little Nicole there was no one better than Daddy.  I think I was a lot like most girls in that there is a special connection to the male in the household.

I say that we learn our gender specific roles early, and yes it is a stereotype, but how else do you explain the screaming baby girl who coos with contentment the moment Daddy walks in the door and says what’s wrong princess?

We have seen it time and again, little girls first learn to flirt, how to manipulate, how to get attention through their interactions with their fathers.

Most of us don’t learn the power of the eyelash bat, or the pout in health class, we learned it from daddy.

I was not any different.  When he was still around, he spoiled me rotten.  I don’t know if my biological sister got the same treatment from him, but at least for a little while mom & dad were married and played house and I was the princess.

I sometimes dream about that apartment….I have to ride by it fairly often and I can almost see myself in the window, watching the street for Daddy’s car, and running up the hallway on chubby feet & thighs to jump into his arms.

Mom was cool & all, but Daddy was the bees knees.

I still remember the last day that we lived in that apartment as a family.  I was in my room, surrounded by my furniture & toys that no one kid should have so much of, and mom and dad were arguing.

I can remember my face frowning at the thought of mom yelling at dad.  Why would you yell at him?  grrrrr.  I got very scared though.  The tone of the argument changed and things started bumping and crashing.  I stood in the hallway for a moment, and then I ran and locked myself in the main bathroom.  I crawled into the bathtub and pulled the curtain but it didn’t stop the noise and I was curled up crying wanting the two of them to stop.  And then ….. they did.

I heard the front door, then I heard the doorknob on the bathroom wiggle.  My mother called out to me to open the door.  No I told her.  She reasoned with me for a while and eventually I got out of the tub and opened the door. 

When she came into the bathroom I saw her white nurse’s uniform red with blood and I thought it was my father’s.  I pushed past her to find him.  Daddy was hurt, he needed my help.  I looked everywhere and he was not in the apartment. 

I returned to the bathroom yelling at her – I wanted to know what she did to MY DADDY! It was then that I saw her eye swelling, and her cut lip which was the source of the blood on her uniform.

It didn’t register to me then though….the blood was HERS he’d struck her in anger.  I paid it no mind…I just wanted Daddy and to make sure that he was okay.  I demanded that she take me out RIGHT NOW to find him!  (I was a very pushy child)

And to her credit, once she’d stopped the bleeding…she did.  We got into her yellow Pontiac, and she drove me around the neighborhood.  I can remember leaning out the window looking everywhere for him, and the increasing sense of despair as he was no where to be found.  When we got back to the apartment I remember telling her how much I hated her for making daddy go away, and not eating and crying into my pillow on my bed for literally hours. 

Even though we were never a family again, I never got over my love for daddy.  I was consistently told, he was shiftless and worthless and a piece of shit, by my mother and grandmother, but daddy’s pedestal would not be moved.

Not even when he didn’t show up for visitation.  Not when he forgot my birthday and Christmas.  Not when he would leave me at nana’s (his mother’s house) for his visitation weekend and I would not see him until it was time to take me back to mom.  Not as I got older and taller and started to question why other daddy’s were around but mine wasn’t.  I was in my 20’s before I started to really question who my father was, until then he was the bestest man in the world and no one would ever replace him.  Even though to tell the truth he really wasn’t shit.

That didn’t matter to the little girl in me though…and that little girl existed until about 2 years ago, I am 38 today.

As I eventually wandered into adulthood, it never occurred to me to call anyone but Lewis daddy.  I’d heard other women refer to their men as daddy, and I was neutral I suppose on the term.  It didn’t squick me out like it does others, and I didn’t get an incest vibe from it, it was just that I had one daddy and hell what other man measured up to my image of him?  None of them.

That prompted a later conversation with him about calling him Daddy.  No way Jose he said.  #kanyeshrug okay – it didn’t matter to me one way or another and quietly to myself I was still thinking of the ex anyhow, so John got what ever I could muster as far as conversation.

When I reunited with the ex the first time, it was after Clyde was here, and I was in a different head space.  Not just about us as a couple but about who Lewis was.

I was beginning to understand – and it only came after Clyde – what a parent really was.  It helped me to begin to understand what my mother and grandmother had been telling me for so long that I ignored.  Kids truly do alter your view of life.

In an IM the ex mentioned that he’d been called ‘papi’ in the past, and hell I was like okay, and soon the name I called him was replaced by papi.  It was a shift.

Calling the ex papi changed how I reacted to him.  Yes a PART of the change would have happened  anyhow as our relationship progressed – but it was that Spanish word for Daddy, that put me in an extra special mindset.

By connection #3….papi had been drop kicked off the stage by Daddy.

Lewis was also knocked off the pedestal.

The pedestal still represented the spot that only 1 man could hold in my life.   Someone so big and strong and protective that I could be anything – do anything – and the one who would look at me as his baby girl and princess.

This was after 30 and I realized not only could I have all of those things from Daddy that I missed as a little girl WITHOUT a daddy, but that I could cum too. 

What I eventually realized about what I get from the one that I call Daddy is that it is the one place where I don’t have to be anything but who and what I am.  No matter what role I have to take on – he is always looking – always protecting – always understanding and never judgmental.

It’s why Reginald was not Daddy.  He did judge…and for a while I overlooked it until I could no longer.

HE  does not judge me.  I can do anything say anything.  If it is good for me – or for us – he encourages it.  If it is not good for me – or for us – HE pushes me in the right direction.

 HE understands how imperfect I am and HE still wants me.  I am still HIS baby girl.  And like a Daddy, HE takes care of everything while walking me along my own path to maturity.  Even when I am ‘all grown up’, I never have to leave.  HE will just adjust to HIS more mature girl and then the fun can really begin.

I still would like to hear from you though constant reader.  I know I know I tossed a lot out here to digest today.  But I still want to hear your thoughts on why or why we should not call our partners Daddy.  I am curious.  Will you share?

I’ve got a song for you: