"Some Daughter"

My favorite school project that Emily ever did was her Charlotte's Web diorama. It was the first report for school that I could actually help her with. During Emily's other projects, I was working in the city and never had time to help her do one, the hours I was keeping were not conducive to it. Emily and I both learned a valuable lesson in the days it took to do that diorama.

All of her prior projects were supervised by my ex and if the items could not be bought at Michael's or A.C. Moore, they wouldn't be part of the project. Even things like rocks and sand needed to come from a bag or a box. I wanted Emily to realize the value of earning a grade through hard work, not buying a grade at the nearest craft store.

When I was younger, my mom and dad were divorced. My mom worked really hard to keep my brother, my sister and me in parochial school, fed and clothed. She did not have the money to buy pre-done projects, we made all of our projects from scratch. We did not feel cheated, quite the contrary, we helped each other and reveled in our creativity. We used whatever materials were around the house to create educational masterpieces. While others were stifled by retail availability, we were only stifled by our imagination. I'm not saying ours were the best looking projects in the school (quite the opposite, usually), or that we were the only family that did it, just that we had a pride in our work and family time that couldn't be bought in a store. As a kid I remember wondering, how many other families worked together like that.

I had just started working from home and Emily had the Charlotte's Web project. She was proud of herself for reading the whole book and asked if we could go buy the supplies for her project. To her chagrin, I did not take her to the craft store, but to the dollar store. I told her she had a $5 budget and that we would have to be creative. The bewilderment on her face made me abruptly aware, that at nine years old, she never had to do this before. She quickly explained it couldn't be done, but knowing better than to cause a scene in the store, listened to me.

In a panic, she could not find anything for webbing, landscape, or background. She did find a bag of plastic farm animals though, but was not happy at her loss of pre-made items for the other things. I threw a bag of Popsicle sticks into our basket as well as clay, markers and a wooden box. When I explained to her that we had reached our budget, she was mortified and I could see the tears forming in her eyes. My heart was breaking, but I knew it would be worth the lesson. I gave her the overview of my plan and the work that she would have to do to complete it. At that moment my heart got a reprieve. My plan had been replaced by a new one revealed by the smile on Emily's face, as she envisioned the finished product.

When we arrived back home, it was time to turn vision into reality. Emily excitedly grabbed an old shoe box, construction paper and some yellow easter grass that we had lying around. We bounced ideas back and forth about how to create what she needed. Her original Popsicle stick fence design was too big to fit in the box, so she came up with the idea of trimming them down. She completed the whole farm and went to bed worried about the web and the spider. With only two days until due date, they were the things she could not figure out by herself.

Now it was time for daddy to stay relevant in his big girls eyes. Hot glue gun in hand and wax paper on counter I began to spin the web. The first design failed miserably, but the second seemed to come out better. After school the next day, Emily was intrigued by the glue web on the wax paper, but could not figure out how it would fit in the finished product. One day to go and her spirits were high as we gently pulled the web from the wax paper. While discussing how to attach the web, Emily came up with the idea of writing the words, “Some Pig” in glittered glue. As I wrote the words backwards, Emily became nervous. Her fears subsided, when she saw the perspective, as we began attaching the web to the once naked shoe box. With the simple addition of the plastic spider, she was done. The look on her face was something I hadn't seen in a while, the look of accomplishment. We did not need the sculpting clay for that project, A much more important thing was sculpted over those few days, a child's mind.

Two weeks later Emily came home from school beaming with great pride. Through hard work and imagination, she had earned an 'A'. Emily learned her creativity couldn't be bought in a store. Three years later, she may ask for a ride to the dollar store, but no longer asks her old man for help. Seeing how she budgeted, designed and created her latest projects, she really didn't need it. We both earned something a little more magical than an 'A' from that project. A moment that father and daughter shared and would always remember.

That's “Some Daughter.”