The worst thing any father can do is make his child cry. Not by scolding them, or unintentionally frightening them, or taking away a favorite toy as punishment. Things like that happen daily. Sometimes it’s needed. It still stings you a little, but you know deep down in your parenting subconscious that it’s all part of the growing up process. You can look yourself in the mirror and know ya done good.

But when it happens…when you don’t see it coming and you look down at your child and silent tears are streaming down her face, and she looks up to you with such sadness that your world seems to stop and go ice cold. When that happens, I gotta say it’s impossible to feel any kind of good about yourself. I’d smash the damn mirror to pieces before looking back at who’s in it.

This happened to me just this morning. After a nice two hour delay of the school day, thanks to the media’s ridiculous hype of a snowstorm, I drove my little girl to school. As usual, Radio Disney belted out all of her (OK, our) favorite kid-rock songs. There was a relatively new single by the Black Eyed Peas that came on, and she was pretty impressed that I already knew most of its lyrics. We had some laughs. My daughter laughs easy.

We arrived in the school parking lot about 20 minutes early. Time to kill. A couple more kid songs and a talk about what the hell happened to all the snow that was promised the night before. A kiss on the head and a deal to keep our fingers crossed for the next “big” storm. Hey, snow days are cool.

But then? Silence. She was staring out her window over at the school building. My daughter likes school. Always has. She excels in all her second grade classes and plays well with others. Her teacher walked by with a friendly wave and she returned it. Half-hearted.

That’s when I sensed it. Something was wrong. She loves this years teacher. I always create funny names for whoever she has teaching her, so I leaned in and was about to ask “Isn’t that Ms -?”

That’s when the most important living being on the face of this mostly useless planet looked back up at me with tears in her eyes. And I knew instantly why. It had nothing to do with a non existent snow day, a long tour at school, or any teacher we’ve ever known.

This had to do with me.

Because every time I take her to school or back home to her mother it’s “goodbye”. Not a safe little wave and I’ll see you after school goodbye. Not a see you in the morning when I get home from work goodbye. Ours is a goodbye until next week. Days pass before that long goodbye is cancelled with a happy wonderful hello. And neither I nor my daughter have any control over it.

We’re both on the other side of a divorce neither of us ever wanted or could even possibly imagine occurring. But every damn day, there it is. And so I do my best to console her. To promise that the days will pass faster than ever and our time together will seem to stand still. And after a long hug and a few noggin’ kisses she calms down and seems to understand.

Saying goodbye doesn’t have to mean forever. Sometimes it just feels that way.