I never planned on being a single father. Who does? You don’t sit in high school thinking, “Yep, in five years I’ll be raising a kid solo and trying to remember the last time I slept through the night.” But here I am. Her mom left when our daughter was still in diapers. I could tell you a dramatic story about it, but truthfully, she’d been halfway gone for a long time. Parenthood is a marathon, not a photoshoot. She wasn’t built for the miles.

I wasn’t either, at first. I was a mess. I once put a diaper on backwards and wondered why the car seat was wet. I tried to make baby food from scratch once—she spit it back at me like I was poisoning her. I googled “can a baby fire their parent” at least twice. But somehow, we survived those years together.

Now she’s five, which means she’s a mix of comedian, dictator, and lawyer. She asks “why” about everything, argues like she’s defending a case in court, and calls me out in public with no shame. Last week she told the cashier at the store that I “can’t cook anything except noodles and sadness.” Not pasta. Noodles and sadness. She’s not wrong, but she didn’t have to say it out loud.

She’s also fearless. She’ll introduce herself to strangers, tell them her whole life story, then invite them to dinner—without checking with me first. Which is exactly what happened at the park today. I blinked, and she was gone from the swings, sprinting across the grass like a heat-seeking missile toward some poor unsuspecting stranger.

I muttered to myself, already preparing the usual apology about her being “too friendly.” But then I looked up.

And saw her.

She was just sitting there, nothing flashy about it, but she had this presence. The kind of presence that made the park feel louder around her, not quieter. Like the world was buzzing but she didn’t need to compete with it. Sunlight cut across her face, and I just… stopped. I’ve spent years with my head down—packing lunches, checking homework, negotiating bedtime—and suddenly I’d lifted it, and there she was.

By the time I caught up, my daughter was already knee-deep in conversation with her, like they were old friends. I scratched the back of my neck, realized I was staring too long, and finally said the only thing my brain could put together.

“She doesn’t usually run off like that.”

Total lie.