I gave up 22 years of my life Raising my triplet nieces – ad what they did at their college graduation made me fall to my knees

• Did I do enough?
• Did I say the right things at the right time?
• Did you know that I loved them, or did they just know I was tired?

I was wondering if the girls noticed.

There was a fear under all that I never said out loud. That somewhere in the back of their hearts, the triplets were still waiting for their real father.

That I was the man who had been there, but not the man they wanted.

I didn’t blame them for it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

There was a fear under everything.

***

The morning of the triplet graduation, I sat in my van in the parking lot for 20 minutes before I could leave.

I was 49 years old. My beard had turned gray in patches. My knee hurt from a ladder fall two summers before and it had never healed.

I had brought a cheap camera, which I didn’t fully know how to use, and I was shaking in my hand.