A little stepfatherly pride...

I may not be her father, and I don't appear in any of her holiday photographs, I know because she had me burn them onto a CD.

This is one of the perils of being a stepfather. The certain knowledge that your stepchildren do not care enough for you to keep or record an image of you. No keepsake or token of your existence will be held by them, and when you are gone she will edit you out of her Mothers life as though you have never been. Yet despite all this, youngest gives me hope for the future. Hope for the next generation.

Why, apart from massive cognitive dissonance on my part, would I think this? Well, her choice of viewing gives me a clue. She cares about what's right, what's proper and free. I've found myself watching her reactions out the corner of my eye. The movie in question is V for Vendetta, famously slagged off by the UK Labour politicians of the time as 'glorifying terrorism'. She dug the movie out of my collection without overt or tacit influence on my part. She is the one who has tried to watch it repeatedly despite a skipping disk drive (Since fixed).

It doesn't matter that she bears me no real love, and that my own affection for her is not reciprocated. To be honest she thinks more of my dog than me, unless this is some form of transference. It matters that she is all grown up now with her own deeply held moral code (Which I hope I have been influential in the shaping of), and is quite the critical thinker.

When the current batch of politicians have finished wrecking the Western economies, it is the next generation that will pick up the pieces of our broken society and change it for the better. I have this sneaking hopeful feeling that she and her children will be a part of that. Maybe this is a lot to read from the viewing of one movie, but I like to look on the bright side that the generation I have helped nurture will bring real hope and change for the better. Not just empty rhetoric. If you'll forgive me I will indulge myself in a little pride at this one tiny achievement. I approve of her.