Rachel: Daddy’s Little Girl

Today is my Rachel’s birthday.  Rachel is my one and only daughter.  Garrison Keillor said, “The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage.  A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm on his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.”  Keillor is absolutely right—and he should know—for he has only one daughter, too!  If Keillor had two or three daughters, or if I had two or three, maybe we would still be a pat of butter, but I think we’d quickly learn how to avoid the hot frying pan!  But, alas, I have only one daughter.  I am a high-class hostage.  I am and have always been, “a pat of butter melting in a hot frying pan”  since the day my Rachel was born.

Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking,

What a dreary world this would be

If you never made your entrance

into this world to be with me.

The Mills Brothers sang a silly song many years ago called “Daddy’s Little Girl.”  Rachel chose it for our daughter-father dance at her wedding.  The lyrics:

You're the end of the rainbow, my pot of gold
You’re daddy’s little girl to have and to hold

A precious gem is what you are

Your mommy’s bright and shining star.

You’re the spirit of Christmas, my star on the tree

You’re the Easter Bunny to mommy and me

You’re sugar, you’re spice, you’re everything nice

And your daddy’s little girl

You’re the treasure I cherish, so sparkling and bright

You are touched by the holy and beautiful light

Like angels that sing, a heavenly thing

And your daddy’s little girl

Euripides said four-hundred years before Jesus was born: “To a father waxing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.”  It is true.  I’m happy to be just a “pat of butter” when it comes to Rachel—she is and will always be “Daddy’s Little Girl!”