My Daughter Taught Me Novels & Stories

My daughter was teaching me how to be her dad because she never had one around to learn from. "Emma, can I tell you something?" I asked, plopping down on the floor. "Yeah!" "I don't know much about being a dad yet, but I wanna learn. If I mess up or forget something, will you help me out?" Her face lit up like crazy. "Really? I can teach you daddy stuff?" "I'd be so happy if you did." Emma hugged me tight. It was the kind of hug that made you get why people were all about kids. "This is gonna be SO fun! I have tons of daddy things to show you!"

“She loved to sing. She’d always sing while she cooked or cleaned. Her voice was soft but… so full of warmth. She’d teach me little songs, and we’d sing together.” I smiled faintly, the memory bringing a brief moment of peace. “One time, she said I had to help her make a pie. She gave me the rolling pin and let me roll the dough, but I got flour everywhere. It was a mess, but she just laughed and said, ‘That’s how we learn.’” The room was silent for a moment, the memory wrapping around me like a soft blanket. I looked at my father, who was staring at the floor, his expression unreadable.

" I was not prepared for this question. It made my heart sink a bit. However, I know I can't avoid this. "My dad became a lawyer after we left everything. I was going to take after him before I met all of you. He was a bit of a goofball. There was never a moment he wasn't looking for a joke to tell. He also had this philosophy that if I learn something and can't do it a month later, I never truly learned. That is why he was a great teacher. He taught me most of the stuff I know." "And your mother?"

RAVEN'S POV That realization had initially been pressing a ton on her. My dad had not only taught me how to bake because he was fond of the family business. The man was training me, preparing me, putting information into my mind that I could not understand until years after he died. All those recipes that he had taught me by heart. All temperature he had demanded that I get just right. Any sequence of time he had drilled into me until I could make it by the time I went to sleep.

"A pastry is not a meal." "It had plums in it. Plums count." I almost smiled. Almost. I sat across from her. For a moment I could not speak. I was thinking of a winter long ago and a piece of the page in a sock under my pillow. I had carried it so quietly, and so well, and I had taught my daughter without ever saying a word that this was what love looked like. The strong one holds the heavy thing. The strong one does not complain. "I taught you this," I said.

"Pretend I know less than I know." I walked her through it. From the beginning, the way she asked, the way our mother used to walk me through things when I was struggling, which was slowly and without impatience and with the particular conviction that understanding was available to anyone willing to sit with a problem long enough. I had learned more about teaching from watching Diana Reyes explain things at a kitchen table than I had learned from any formal instruction. For an hour, I was just her brother.

I held the phone and felt the particular quality of receiving something I had been working toward for months not relief exactly, but the specific, warm weight of having done a thing correctly. “Thank you,” I said. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank him. He taught you how to see people clearly.” She hung up with the efficient directness she always used. I set the phone down and sat in the study for a moment in the early morning quiet. My father had taught me how to see people clearly.

I comment. Her face is rigid for some seconds before she smiles. "I've played since I was a little girl" Hmm...so I've heard. Ethan told me the story of how her dad would make her take lessons on it. And when she had Ethan, she passed it down to him. Ethan did try to teach me sometimes but I wasn't so good at learning it. "That's really nice" "Indeed it is. I taught my sons how to play too. Diana was too much of a trouble to learn anything"

"I never knew what my daughters could do. Never. When they asked me to teach them about their powers, I would always tell them to get back to their rooms and learn how to fight. They would argue with me, but I never listened. One day, when Ethel took them to the forest for hunting, Catty saved a bird with her spell. And hearing that, I felt proud thinking my daughters could do more than just fight. So I began teaching them about their powers. But the sad part was, I could never see them use it.

Do they only look forward to teaching me because I'm his daughter? "Ah, please, don't overestimate me," I begged, raising a hand to decline the sudden unwanted recognition. "His Grace merely taught me some things he knows and I've never once met my father to learn things from him. I might be his daughter but compared to him, I am not—"