Till We Are Home

I thought it might be fun to tell some stories about my daughter from time to time. I love and miss her so much, so these stories may be more for me to remember her and enjoy some fun, beautiful, and fond stories of her life. But, it may also help those who didn’t know her find out a little more about this precious girl who went home to the Lord and awaits us there.

I love stories…our kids love stories…our family loves stories. When the kids were younger, we loved picking up books to read to them or watching good movies and good t.v. shows. Some of our favorites, though, were the ones that sparked imagination. 

I’m not entirely sure how we found the Bad Kitty books by Nick Bruel, but found them we did and they became one of the series that we read several times over. If you don’t know Bad Kitty, well, she’s a kitty that is…bad. Her tales (or is it tails?) involve messing up the house, giving the family’s pup a hard time, and having some sort of tiff with an Uncle Murray. Our family would roar at the antics of this bad kitty…I think largely because it was just so fun to imagine the things she did as if they were real life.

It didn’t take long for my imaginative youngest daughter to take to Bad Kitty – all three of them did, really. I think she, too, would play the kitty’s hijinks out in her head and often would laugh as loud as I would while reading the books. Well, when Isabel was in kindergarten, her class regularly had times where parents were invited to come in and read to the whole class. 

Our time rolled around, and Isabel was jazzed. We would be coming to her class and seeing all her friends, her teacher, and getting to participate in her day. And I knew immediately what book to read. 

It was a Friday morning. The sun was shining in our small Tennessee town, a beautiful late October day. My wife and I pulled up to the school, signed in at the front desk, then wound our way through the concrete-walled hallways. Corkboards of art projects lined the walls along with decorated doorways of all sorts of themes, and sometimes children lined the walls to shuffle from class-to-class. Smells of cafeteria meatloaf, Salisbury steak, corn dogs, fries, and, of course, tater tots wafted in from the lunchroom. 

We passed several classrooms and followed along the white-tiled floor to the kindergarten wing. My wife and I looked into the window of the door and saw the kids milling about to put up the previous activities supplies. It was time for the next activity of the day: story time with Isabel’s mommy and daddy.

We opened the door, caught our little girl’s eye, and a mixture of joy, excitement, laughter, and maybe a tinge of confusion swept over her face. She had to be thinking, what in the world is my daddy doing? Isabel sees me, along with the rest of her classmates, all decked out in a kitty-cat costume of sorts. Earlier that week I found some black fingerless gloves with kitty paws decorated on the inside palm, a rubber cat nose and whiskers to go on my nose, and a little girl’s hair headband with black, furry cat ears on top. 

Dressed in my cat gear and Bad Kitty in hand, it was story time. Isabel ran over to give us giant hugs, then took my hand to the chair in the front of the classroom to the designated story time spot. The rest of the classroom hurried to put away the final supplies and found their seats in a semi-circle around me on the carpeted part of the floor. Some asked questions of my appearance, some giving me looks of curious humor, and some with looks that asked, who is this weird guy?

I opened the book and read the ABCs of Bad Kitty. The ABCs of her favorite foods now gone and left with other food she just didn’t like (Asparagus, Beets, etc.). Then came her reactions to this travesty (Ate my homework, Bit Grandma, etc.) – all the while my sweet girl didn’t leave my side. 

She stood right beside me in her deep pink dress and long sleeve white undershirt giggling at all the right parts such as when Bad Kitty clawed the carpets.

She laughed with her friends at my acting scenes out like when Bad Kitt damaged the dishes.

And she hugged my arm, staying near and smiling that precious overbite, dimpled smile.

As I finished the book along with the appropriate kitty theatrics that go along with the story, the class thanked us and went to their next activity at the teacher’s prompting. Isabel stayed with us a few minutes to take pictures and give last hugs, telling us how much she loved this.

That sweet girl was proud to have us there. Like most kids, she loved sharing the events of her life with us, even when she wasn’t a kindergartner. That day was one of her favorites…we talked about it for years after, remembering that day when daddy dressed up like Bad Kitty and read to her kindergarten class. It’s a sweet memory of ours just thinking about how excited she was, the surprise on her face because she didn’t know I’d dress up, and the joy and sparkle in her eyes.

You can see some of that in this picture…I sure do miss that little girl. I miss her so much. But, I’m so very thankful to the Lord that He gave us such a sweet girl. I’m thankful the Lord gave us those 14 years with her. Thankful that I’m her daddy and thankful for His gift of allowing me to do daddy things, even silly daddy things like reading about bad kitties with her.