My dad is actually my step-dad. He and my mom got together when I was eight, and got married a few years later. I never actually call him my step-dad, because as far as Iâm concerned heâs just my dad.
My bio-dad has never been in the picture. Iâve never even met him. So my formative years were spent having a very complicated relationship with the concept of fathers. I both wanted a dad and didnât need one, because my family is fairly large and I had no shortage of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins stepping in to help my mom out.
But I still always felt sad about not having a dad, y'know? Everyone else did. It made me feel lonely and kind of abandoned.
My favorite book when I was little was Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, by Eric Carle. If youâre unfamiliar, the plot is basically that this guy loves his child so much that he literally steals the moon from the sky when she asks. I LOVED that book, but, likeâŠit also made me kind of sad, because I didnât have a dad who would do that for me.
Fast forward to when I was older, and my (step)dad and my mom had my little brothers. When I was in high school, they were both really little, and one of them got his hands on my copy of Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, which Iâd kept for nostalgiaâs sake.
Little shit destroyed it. He was little, he didnât really know any better yet, but I was DEVASTATED. I full-on sobbed. Sure, I could get another one, but it wouldnât be the same, y'know?
Christmas that year, I open up my gifts, and thereâs one from my dad in particular. It was kinda weird, because my parents never really specify when a Christmas gift is from one specifically; they just get all the kids gifts and only label who theyâre to.
So I open it, intrigued, and y'all know what it was?
It was NOT a new copy of Papa Please Get the Moon for Me.
But it WAS a light-up model of the moon, that still to this day hangs on the wall in my living room and makes me get a little emotional every time I look at it.
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