For two years, I walked my neighbor’s granddaughter, Marissa, to school. The first day I met her, she was crying behind an apartment building because it was “daddy-daughter day” and she had no one. Her dad was in prison, her mom was gone, and her grandmother was too sick to walk her.
I offered to go—just for that day.
But “just for today” turned into every morning at 7 a.m. She’d wait on the porch like I was the sun coming up. Over time, she started calling me Daddy Mike. I tried to correct her, but her grandmother quietly asked me not to. “If it helps her heal,” she said, “please don’t take that away.”
So I didn’t.
She saved me, too. After decades of loneliness, those walks gave my life a shape again. And every time she asked, “You won’t leave me, will you?” I promised, “Never.”
Then one morning, a man was on the porch gripping her hand while she cried. He looked like her—same eyes, same face.
“I’m her uncle,” he said. “Her grandmother died this morning. Legally, I have to take her… unless you want her.”
He didn’t soften it. He called it a “deal.” He admitted he didn’t want her, and he wanted a clean break—papers signed, responsibility transferred.
I was terrified. I was 58. What if I failed her?
But Marissa looked at me like I was the only safe thing left.
So I said, “I’ll take her.”
That night she fell asleep holding my hand. The next morning at school, the secretary slid a form across the counter.
“Guardian?”
“Yes,” I said.
And for the first time in a long time, it felt earned.