My Jorinda | ✔ (#OnceUponNow)

My Jorinda

"Daddy!"

Patricia runs out of her kindergarten classroom with open arms, just as she does every week day. As always, I set my work bag down on the tiled floor of the school hallway in order to bend down to catch her as she falls into me, giggling uncontrollably. I can't help the grin that forms on my lips as she stares up at me with her big, sparkling eyes - the ones that remind me so much of...

"Hey, baby girl," I laugh as her teacher looks on, smiling as she always does. I mouth a silent 'thank you' to her, and she simply nods before disappearing back into her classroom. "How was school today?"

Patty chatters about her day from the backseat as we drive home, backed by the surrounding noises of big city traffic. It's always a nightmare this time of the day, with rush hour steadily approaching and everyone else racing against us to get home. It's one of many sacrifices I have to make as a single parent, working a full shift and then picking Patty up from school so late in the afternoon. I'm just thankful that her teacher has agreed to stay and watch her after school until I can get off of work during the week. I don't know how I would manage otherwise.

"Look at what Jimmy gave me today!" my daughter suddenly crows, pulling something from her Dora the Explorer backpack. It's a flower, as best as I can tell through the rearview mirror, bent and mangled from being trapped in her bag for who knows how long. "He said it was special because it was the first one of the year," she says proudly, "and then he gave it to me. Isn't it pretty?"

"It is," I agree, "but you're telling me a boy gave you a flower?"

In the mirror, I catch a glimpse of the sour face she pulls on me. "It's not like that, Daddy," she grumbles obstinately, making me grin. "It was pretty, and I thought it was pretty, too, so he gave it to me- Why are you smiling like that?"

"Boys give girls pretty things when they like them, don't they?"

"Ewwww! That's gross, Daddy! Boys are icky!"

I can't help but laugh as she throws herself into a full-length description of why she will never like boys, and how they all have cooties - except for me, of course, because I'm her father and apparently no longer a boy in that sense.

"You're a man," she insists when I disagree. "A big, tough man. You can't have cooties. It's just not possible."

Patty gradually quiets down, though, as the sun begins to set in the distance. She gazes silently out the window, watching as the city lights begin to drop away into the distance, giving rise to the outlying suburbs. The encroaching wheat fields begin to signal our approach to the old farmhouse the two of us call home, and it's not long after that I pull the car into the driveway. As I park and tug the keys from the ignition, letting in the quiet sounds of the night, Patty finally speaks up again.

"Did you ever give Mommy anything?" she asks quietly, startling me from my own thoughts. "Did you ever give her a flower or something to tell her you liked her?"

Just like that, I freeze, daring not even to breathe as the simple question strikes a painful chord in my heart. It's becoming increasingly common that my daughter will bring up her mother to me, and will ask the questions I would rather not answer. What was once rare in the first few years of her life is now becoming a rather daily occurrence, one that I could honestly do without. The thought of her mother is like fire in my lungs, ice in my chest; it only brings overwhelming grief with it, so as with most other things, I hide it in the darkest recesses of my mind and drown out all thoughts of it in the monotony of our mundane life.

But Patty is a curious girl, and becomes even more so with each day that passes. I can't hide anything from her, now - not even the whereabouts of her mother, whom she can't seem to get off of her mind. Every other minute, she brings the topic up with innocent questions such as this.