Chapter Text
“Good afternoon, everybody,” Miss Lisa sing-songs, smiling at everyone as they go walking out the door to meet their parents.
Well, everyone but me. I can’t go with them. Nobody’s here to pick me up. Not even Ruby’s moms can take me home today because Ruby is at her grandma’s this week. It’s super not fair - I’ll be stuck here for ages yet.
Apparently Miss Lisa doesn’t understand how annoying this is because she gives me an even bigger smile than she gave everyone else, like everything is okay and not the absolute worst. She says, “Gus, your moms will be here as soon as they can.”
I give Miss Lisa my most unhappiest look. It’s absolutely-totally-incredibly not fair. How come I have to wait for who knows how long for my moms to show up? Everyone else’s parents got here on time. But everyone else’s parents don’t have to deal with J.R. and her dumb ear infection.
I hate having a little sister. It’s the worstest.
Miss Lisa ignores my most unhappiest look and walks over to the whiteboard. It’s covered with a big colourful sheet of paper because underneath there’s a surprise. We don’t get to find out what it is until tomorrow. Except now Miss Lisa is peeling away the piece of paper. She smiles over her shoulder at me and says, “Since you’re staying, we can get started on tomorrow’s surprise activity together.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she says with a big grin. “As a special treat, okay?”
I grin back at Miss Lisa. She’s the nicest. On the whiteboard are the numbers 1, 2, and 3, all glittery and colourful. Next to each of them is an activity. Miss Lisa explains them to me: “Everyone gets to choose a project for Father’s Day. You can paint a picture of your dad, or you can make him a sculpture, or you can write a book about him.”
“The book,” I blurt out, extra loud. “I want to write Daddy a book.”
Miss Lisa smiles at me like she knew that would be my answer. Miss Lisa knows me pretty well now. She calls me over to the big art table and sits me down with a really big sheet of paper.
“Let’s do some brainstorming,” she suggests, pulling out a packet of markers. “We’re going to fill the book with pages about you and your daddy. Every page needs a picture and a caption. Let’s come up with some ideas for what they might be. What do you like about your daddy, Gus?”
She hands me a purple marker and chooses a pink one for herself. “You can write the words you know. I’ll help you with any others.”
I stare at the big sheet of paper. I want to fill it all up so there’s hardly any white left; only ideas about how great Daddy is. I pull the cap off my marker and write the first thing I think of.
“Kind,” I read aloud, “K-I-N-D. Daddy is kind.”
Miss Lisa pats my shoulder and asks, “Can you give me an example?”
I have to think for a minute. There’s lots of ways that Daddy is kind but Miss Lisa probably doesn’t want to hear absolutely all of them. There’s way too many. So I have a good think and then choose one of the best ones.
“Daddy is kind when he gives me compliments,” I say. I watch carefully as Miss Lisa writes that down for me with her pink marker. “Like he tells me that I’m brilliant.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“It makes me feel…” I pause and glance at the fuzzy feelings chart on the wall. I try to choose one that I’m still learning all the letters to. “Terrific. T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C.”
Miss Lisa smiles and writes that down. Then she reads the whole thing aloud. “Daddy is kind. Daddy is kind when he gives me compliments, like when he tells me that I’m brilliant. It makes me feel terrific. Very good, Gus! Can you think of a picture to go with it?”
I nod my head. “It could be me and Daddy reading together. That’s when he tells me how clever I am. And it could have lots of gold stars because gold stars mean ‘brilliant’.”
“Great idea,” Miss Lisa says. She ruffles my hair. “What else could we put in your book about your Daddy?”
I look at the big sheet of paper and suddenly it doesn’t seem big enough. I could probably fill up this page and maybe ten others like it with all the great things about Daddy, because he really is the bestest that there is. So I turn to Miss Lisa and say, “I have lots of ideas. How many can I choose?”
“Well, let’s see…” Miss Lisa gets up and walks over to the cupboard. “I wonder how much paper we have to use for the books?”
While Miss Lisa is searching in the cupboard, I look over at the family tree. The family tree is right by the window because Miss Lisa says trees need lots of light to grow. Everybody has a branch and on mine I have pictures of moms, J.R., Uncles Mikey and Ben, and Daddy and Jus. The picture of Daddy and Jus is maybe my favourite because I took it when I visited them in New York. Jus was feeling sad that weekend but in this photo he’s happy because Daddy and I cheered him up. We must have done a really good job because he’s smiling so much that you can see why Daddy calls him ‘Sunshine’. Sometimes when I’m feeling a bit sad I like looking at the photo of Daddy and Jus. It always makes me feel like I’ve caught some of Jus’ sunshineyness.
“Okay, here we go!” Miss Lisa comes back from the cupboard with a big stack of colourful papers and sets them down in front of me. There must be at least a zillion pages and there are so many colours. I want to use every single colour that there is.
As I stare at the humongous stack of papers, I ask Miss Lisa, “So how many pages can I do?”
Miss Lisa grins at me and says, “As many as you’d like.”