Turns out, I had been asking the wrong question all those years.
Being their father was never about whether I knew what I was doing.
It wasn’t about blood.
It wasn’t about having enough money.
It wasn’t about doing everything perfectly.
It was about waking up the next morning.
And the morning after that.
And staying when leaving would have been easier.
Twenty-two years earlier, my brother left three babies outside my door because he believed he couldn’t be their father.
That night, I believed I was only stepping in until someone better came along.
I spent half my life afraid the girls would eventually understand the difference between an uncle and a dad.
They did.
Long before I did.
And on the day they graduated, they finally made me understand something I should have known from the beginning.
A father isn’t always the man who gives you his name.
