Our daughter has an amazing memory of things that happened, and things that didn't happen. Last year I promised Kolby that we would go to the Butterfly Ball...the father/daughter dance that our local Catholic school puts on each year.
She was going to wear a fancy dress and I was going to wear "my coat that isn't for the winter" AKA a suit coat. We planned and planned for that day, and practiced our dancing, Steph ordered her a flower corsage that looked like a butterfly. Then came the day...it was snowing and windy as the day began, and the snow piled up and piled up.
About an hour before we needed to leave for town Steph and I thought it would be a bad idea to drive the 15 minutes to town, so I broke the news to Koko and she was OK with the choice. She mentioned that we had to "cancel" the Butterfly Ball a couple times the next week, and then for the most part it was a non-issue.
UNTIL about a month ago. Steph had left the corsage in the fridge on a top shelf that Kolby can't even see...but one day she found it and started wearing it around the house. A couple days after that the guilt trips began.
One evening she snuggled up to me and said, "Daddy, do you remember when we DIDN'T go to the Butterfly Ball?"
I was like, "yeah???"
She said, "I just remember that we didn't go cause we cancelled it."
That was the first reminder of the missed opportunity, and the rest of October the reminders piled up. It seems like the only thing we could talk about was missing the Butterfly Ball. Then yesterday to cap off the shame...she dressed Brecken up in a shirt, tie, and fancy boy vest with jeans and dress shoes and then she put on a fancy dress and her Butterfly Ball corsage and proceeded to tell me that SHE was taking Brecken to the ball this year and she was going to, "practice him on his dancing with a girl."
We got a good kick out of it, but deep down I couldn't help but feel a little bad that I didn't try to drive through the snow that day to dance with my daughter...WE WILL NOT MISS THE BUTTERFLY BALL this year...I will drive through anything to be there with her.
BUT I wonder if she will still be talking about it 6 months after the event if we actually go...sometimes the best memories are of the special events that didn't happen.
