Single dads hold the world on their shoulders

Picture this: a 5’8”— but actually more like 5’7”—skydiving, motorcycle riding, Brit braiding his daughter’s hair and picking out her shoes. For the past nine years, this has been my life.

Some might think all my dad could manage to do was order take out and pour himself a pint, but he spends every night I’m with him making some sort of English dinner…and then he pours himself a pint.

When I was a tween, it was difficult for both me and my dad to get along. I felt like we just couldn’t understand one another. My dad didn’t understand why the wrong color dress was a monumental crisis and I didn’t understand why it wasn’t.  I think now—with me at sixteen years old and my dad approaching fifty—we have both come to terms with the fact that there is only a small chance that we will ever be on the same page; but the difference is that now we accept that and don’t let it keep us from having and maintaining a good relationship.

I’m always the first to criticize him for being too tough or not caring enough about what goes on in my life, but my dad has managed to take the role of both mom and dad when I’m with him—only now, as a teenager, I have to rely on myself to braid my own hair. However, I still have him help me pick out my shoes.

So even though I stiffen up when he brings up boys and a vacant expression falls over his face when I ask him what he thinks of my prom dress, I know that at the end of the day his ability to see things the way I see them and vice versa means nothing when we’re just sitting watching some British action movie.

And now, every time we sit down to watch a movie with a bowl of buttered popcorn between us, I can’t help but think single parents are never given enough credit for keeping themselves together 24/7. Because, let’s face it, a girls first hero is her dad, and whether or not he’s fighting super villains or battling the evil that is curly hair, he is superhuman.