My daughter turns 25 this week.  On the heels of my 50^th birthday, this is the emotional version of the perfect storm.  I mean, kids make us parents feel old anyway `but, I mean, C’mon!  Wasn’t it only yesterday that her mother and I brought her home from the hospital?

My wife and I were, and are, so blessed and excited to have this bundle of joy come in to our lives.  I remember the tremendous sense of awe and responsibility that overwhelmed me in the days immediately after her birth.  Everything in the world seemed to be magnified a hundred-fold as I wondered what the impact of whatever I was observing, thinking about or doing would impact my young family now and in the future.

I remember one day, driving west on Peoria Avenue in Phoenix shortly after her birth.  I was listening to Billy Joel’s, “Leave A Tender Moment Alone”, playing on the radio and happened to look down and realized that I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.  From that moment forward, I became a seat-belt wearing fool.  Why?  Because I had a wife AND a daughter that depended on me!

Over time, it became obvious that my little one shared her old man’s love of music.  When she was able to stand on her own, she would bop up and down whenever she heard a tune that had any sort of beat to it.  If you were to see some of our home videos, you would see lots of footage of her singing, banging on a piano, or bopping to music with me.

She developed an ear for music very early on.  I remember one time in the mid-80’s, I had been listening a lot to Genesis’ “Invisible Touch” cassette, especially the song, “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”.  While we were eating in a restaurant, with music playing in the background, Phil Collin’s, “Sussudio” started to play.  What happened next absolutely blew my mind. 

She started rocking from side-to-side in her high chair singing, “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”.  I turned to my wife, asking her if she caught the fact that our daughter drew a correlation from “Tonight”, which she heard countless times (and sung by Phil Collins) and a song that she had never heard before, also sung by Mr. Collins (“Sussudio”), but on a different album.

I knew then that I had permanently warped our daughter.

Over the years, we shared, and continue to share, a mutual love for classic rock music.  While her peers were in to boy bands and the like, my little cherub was into the Beatles and the Stones.  While running her to her various extra-curricular activities, we would jam out to Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and many, many other great artists.  For her sixteenth birthday, I took here to see Peter Frampton in concert.  The debate still rages within the family as to whether or not the present was for our daughter or for me.

I’ll never tell.

Today, we still talk a lot about music.  She’ll turn me on to newer stuff like Muse, The Black Keys and Cat Power and I keep turning her on to the classics.  When I hear something new, I’ll often ask her what the story is on the artist and, more times than not, she knows the story about them.  That’s my girl!

Have we had our child/parent run-ins and issues? Of course!  Most families experience those times and we were no different.  Does she do everything we wish she would do?  Absolutely . . . NOT!  While her fierce independence has often driven us to the edge of parental insanity, it is also one of her most endearing traits she possesses.  We love her more than life itself and she still brings us lots of joy and laughter.  We can’t be any more proud parents than we are today.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo!  You’re still my “little rock ‘n roll”!