When I met my wife, her daughter, Lily, was only four.<\/p>\n
At first, I was just the guy who read bedtime stories, made pancakes on Saturdays, and showed up to dance recitals with a camera around my neck.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she started calling me Dad.<\/p>\n
I never asked her to.<\/p>\n
Her biological father, Mark, was still part of her life, but inconsistently. Sometimes he would call every week. Other times months passed without hearing from him.<\/p>\n
By the time Lily was fourteen, she had learned not to expect too much.<\/p>\n
Last night, she was visiting him when I got a message.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you come pick me up?\u201d<\/p>\n
No explanation.<\/p>\n
When I arrived, she walked quickly to my car and climbed into the passenger seat.<\/p>\n
Her eyes were red.<\/p>\n
I asked if she was okay.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n
Instead, she pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket.<\/p>\n
\u201cRead this.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a school form for an upcoming father-daughter event.<\/p>\n
At the bottom, students had to write the name of the person they wanted to attend with.<\/p>\n
Lily had written mine.<\/p>\n
I looked over at her.<\/p>\n
She whispered, \u201cHe saw it and got mad. He said you\u2019re not my real dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a second, I didn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n
Then I told her the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not your biological father. But being your dad has never felt temporary to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She started crying again.<\/p>\n
This time, so did I.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, I walked into that school gym beside her.<\/p>\n
And when someone asked who I was, Lily smiled and said simply:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I met my wife, her daughter, Lily, was only four. At first, I was just the guy who read bedtime stories, made pancakes on Saturdays, and showed up to dance recitals with a camera around my neck. Eventually, she started calling me Dad. I never asked her to. Her biological father, Mark, was still …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9728,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9726\/revisions\/9728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}