Supergirl

We were lying side by side on a blanket in the backyard underneath a buttery moon and a sparkling canopy of early evening stars when the Little Miss chuckled softly to herself. This was, I knew from experience, the prelude to a grand pronouncement.

“I know who I want to be, Daddy,” she said resolutely.

I suppressed a chuckle. Last week she had decided on being a fire fighter; three weeks before that, she was ready to be a pop star, and a month or so before that, after a trip our family had taken to visit my in-laws, she was going to be an airline pilot. The perennial jobs…mommy, doctor, cowgirl, pet store owner, and princess…stayed in the mix no matter what else she was considering. “What’s that, sweetheart?”

“Not ‘what’, who,” she corrected me with as much patience as a five-year-old with a very, very active mind could muster. I thought I heard her sigh…sometimes she thought I was the most amazing man in the universe and sometimes she seemed to wonder how such a moron could be her father…but I wasn’t sure. “I’m going to be Supergirl.”

“Are you now?” I smiled. She liked to look through my comics…a childhood interest I had carried into my dotage…and sometimes we would read them together but I never thought she gave them much thought past that.

“Yes,” she said, “I think what this world needs a good super-hero.”

“And that would be you?”

“That would be me,” she replied without hesitation. “Somebody’s got to be Supergirl and why shouldn’t it be me?”

The logic was, of course, irrefutable. I looked up the lazy moon and smiled. “Why not indeed?” She nudged her little head against my shoulder in the shy way she did when she knew that I was giving her the space to dream whatever fearless dreams she chose to dream. “Maybe one day…when you’re not fighting crime and stuff…you could take me to the moon. I’ve always wanted to go to the moon….okay?”

I could feel her smiling at me but I did not turn my head. “Okay,” she said. “As soon as I have a day off…Supergirl’s got a lot to do, you know.”

“Yes I know,” I replied. “Thank you.”

She snuggled a bit closer and joined me at looking up at the bright and beautiful moon. “You’re welcome,” the Little Miss…my Supergirl…said before we both into the same waking dream…a dream of flying to visit that welcoming moon.