She licked his face…a lot. When Zoe got excited, she needed to go for a walk no matter how recently she’d been outside. It was her way, and that became Jovan’s first order of business. Not wanting to be away from Daddy so shortly after he returned, I went with them and held his hand as we circled the block and talked about his trip.
Something snapped in me, and I no longer questioned what I wanted to do. I stopped and turned to face Daddy, not wanting to wait another second to tell him what I’d decided.
With some dogs, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. They’d have been pulling at their leash, demanding to continue their journey. But Zoe just stood there, chilling like the good girl she was.
“I think we can figure this out. I want to figure this out. I don’t like you being gone for a handful of days,” I said, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “So, if it’s okay with you, let’s do this thing.”
“It’s more than okay with me.” He gave me a kiss, a real one, far too short for my liking but probably a little too long for standing on the street.
When the walk was over, all I wanted to do was have Daddy give me a bath, get me dressed in my softest jams, and be little for the night. That would have to wait. We needed to discuss things further, or we’d end up back where we began.
Daddy was tired, his poor eyes struggling to stay open. Figuring out how this was going to look for us was going to have to wait. Daddy needed sleep…a lot of it.
We took a shower together and climbed into bed, snuggling close and falling sound asleep.
The next morning, over coffee, we made a plan. It was Daddy’s idea, and he’d already had one half formed in his mind when we started. Daddy knew I didn’t feel comfortable with him cutting off people who might need him so we could play. He explained how his on-call shifts worked, and getting calls on days he wasn’t on call was rare. That was what happened after our first date, but, according to Daddy, that was the first time in nearly a year. That wasn’t to say it couldn’t happen five times in one shift. But it put the situation in perspective.
The first thing we decided was that we wouldn’t have little time on his on-call nights. Why ask for trouble? We would save our daddy/little time for when he was fully off. There was still a chance that situations would arise where he was the best person to call, but that was where Daddy’s idea came in.
Daddy suggested we create a checklist that wasn’t so much for him as it was for me. If he got a call and was needed while I was deep in little space, it would become my resource. The top of the list included him getting eye-to-eye with me and telling meDaddy had to go to work. Then, he would let me help him get ready to go, slowly working myself out of my little space.
I had my own tasks to do. They were small gestures, things that I thought might help me come out of little space without it being too abrupt and included watching a certain cartoon to take decision-making out of that step, changing my clothes, having a cup of coffee. Nothing earth-shattering or unique, and all of it was up for negotiation and reevaluation at any point in time. It was a tool, not a rule.
When we were done with writing it and felt good about it, he typed it up and sent it to be printed and laminated. Whoever was in charge of that task was going to be confused about what kind of list this was. From the outside, it didn’t make any sense. That was fine by me.
The outside world wasn’t who mattered. We were.
Daddy said that laminating made it easy for me to use my dry-erase marker that lived on my fridge to check off the boxes, assured me that we could print a new one every day, and not to let the lamination give it a feeling of permanency.
Best of all, Daddy said that when all the boxes were ticked, I got a prize. I still didn’t know what that prize was. Daddy hadn’t told me, but knowing him, it was going to be a good one.
“Now that’s done, can we play?” I stuck out my bottom lip.
“Of course we can, my sweet boy,” Daddy said. “How about this? I’ll take Zoe for a walk so she doesn’t interrupt us and then I’ll order a kid’s meal from your favorite burger place.”
“That’s so far away. It’ll take a long time.” It wasn’t that far, but any time away from Daddy felt like a lot.
“Is that a no?”
“It’s not a no! They’re my favorite.” And they came with a paper hat.
“I thought so. When I come back, we can eat lunch together. After that, Daddy can give you a tubby, dress you up alladorable-like, and you can play with your new stickers with silly songs on in the background.”
“I have new stickers?” This was news to me.
He kissed my forehead, got up, and crossed over to his suitcase, where he unzipped the front pouch and pulled out a huge stack of stickers. “I picked these up for you while I was gone.”
“Stickers!” I was pretty sure everyone loved them. How could anyone not love stickers?
“So, does that sound like a plan?”
“The best plan ever, Daddy!”
He took care of Zoe, and then we followed our plan. My body tensed when his phone rang, only for it to be his friend Bridger, who wanted to know if he was going to a munch this month. Nothing that pulled me out of little space.
The food, the stickers, the company, the tubby, all of it was great. But my favorite part of the day was when he tucked me into bed for a nap and read me a story. It was an old one about a goblin stealing a little girl to become the ruler of their land. It was ridiculous. Why wouldn’t goblins rule their own land?
There was something magical about listening to Daddy read to me, making all the voices as I snuggled in close and slowly drifted off to sleep. In that moment, I knew everything was going to be okay, and Jovan was going to be my daddy for a really long time…possibly forever.
