YOU DON’T SAY!

For thirty-eight years, I’ve been working on getting my daughter Ellen to say just one word, Dad, or daddy, or even dada. For all these past thirty-eight years she says: “momma” and will say it often. When she sees me, she calls me: “Momma” and I understand it. She can’t form words in her mouth can only say: happy and momma, and manages to survive with the help and love of some truly wonderful people who support her everyday!

These past few years I would meet up with her for her various doctor’s appointments and when she sees me she calls out: “Momma!” and comes running to hugs me. When that happens, a funny thing happens to me, I lose my identify, my sense of being in public, and hug her back. She smiles and I realize, she loves me for being who I am, no pretense needed, no conditions need to be met.

Once, while at a visit to the hospital, I sat with two caretakers who assist Ellen, and waited for a doctor to come out to talk to me. One asked me if she said any other words other than those I described. I said I wish she would say daddy, and of she ever did, I would give a million dollars to hear her call me that. Almost immediately, the word spread that I was awarding a million bucks for anyone who could get Ellen to say daddy.

At every doctor’s appointment, they were working feverishly to get Ellen to say it. But knowing Ellen, you don’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do (Like her mother). So I would lean back amused and confident, thinking my money was safe.

Then comes Father’s Day. TLW (The Little Woman) comes out to the den with my daughter, holding a present for me, and instructs Ellen to “give it to Daddy.” My daughter flings the present at me and laughs; this is how she is. I open the present, and make a big deal, but she really doesn’t understand it all, herself.

Mom goes back to making dinner and Ellen is standing over me. She works hard to get my attention and is ‘talking’ to me in her own way. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, with prompting, on Father’s Day she says: “DADA DADA!”

Perhaps my best Father’s Day ever.