Daughters are dilemmas

Daughters are dilemmas.

They’re riddles. They’re smiling enigmas. They’re as confounding as pop quizzes about chemical compounds in an English class. They’re really long extension cords all tangled up that you can’t find the end to. They’re cryptography incarnate.

I know this because my 5-year-old daughter is starting to ask questions that not only do I not have answers for, I don’t even know where they’re coming from.

Case in point:

I was loading the dishwasher last week when my daughter sashayed into the kitchen and asked, “Dad, do I look hot?”

I didn’t quite hear her the first time because loading a dishwasher requires focus similar to packing a moving van. This dish moved here allows for that bowl to fit nicely there, and, voila!, there’s room for two more coffee cups.

“What’s that, hon?” I said, looking up.

“Do I look hot?” she asked, cocking a hip and tossing her hair a bit.

I didn’t answer right away because it took me a second to process that her question had nothing to do with the temperature outside, which was, indeed, quite hot.

My first clue to discerning the intent of her query was that she had changed clothes. Instead of the t-shirt and shorts she had been wearing less than a quarter of an hour ago, she now sported a lavender sateen skirt and a pink cotton top adorned in the center with rhinestones in the shape of a heart. The pink plastic shoes with raised heels she wore appeared a little large. She had a pair of red sunglasses pushed back on the top of her head. In the crook of her arm, she carried a glittering pink handbag with a purple fuzzy trim. Each of her fingers was accented with a plastic ring collected over time from cereal boxes, the dentist’s office, and bubblegum machines.

There were other clues as well.

“What’s on your mouth?” I asked.

“Lip gloss,” she said, puckering her lips.

I leaned down and sniffed.

“Why do you smell like,” I took a second sniff to be sure, “. . . a pine tree?”

“Oh, I put on some air freshener,” she said. “Do I look hot?”

I finally grasped what she was asking, but even after understanding her question, I was far from prepared to offer up an answer.

I realized I was a stranger in a strange land that only appeared to be my own kitchen. Standing before me was a sight I could barely comprehend.

I grew up with three brothers. There was never any lip gloss in our house. There were no pink handbags. If my brothers and I used air freshener it was for some sort of aerosol attack in which we attempted to blind our opponents with direct hits to their eyes.

At the same time my mind was trying to get a handle on the foreign practice of accessorizing, it struggled with the idea of my 5-year-old daughter using the word “hot.”

What kind of question is “Do I look hot?” from a 5-year-old? This is a problem. Our culture is exposing children to sexuality far, far too early, and conversations between parents and a child that may once have taken place when they were in their early teens are now taking place years earlier.

I’m not prepared for that.

My first inclination was to answer my daughter’s question along the lines of, “No, you do not look hot. You’re too young to look hot, and even when you’re old enough to look hot, you should never ask your father if you look hot because my answer will always be ‘Over my dead body, little missie.’ If you must ask someone, you should ask your mother when your father isn’t around to hear you ask. And no more TV for you, young lady, because you shouldn’t even know the word hot outside its relation to bathwater, the stove, and the weather.”

But then I thought maybe I was projecting my definition of “hot” into the moment. My daughter’s understanding of the word was surely devoid of any sexuality. To her, the word “hot” is merely a synonym for “pretty.”

Don’t overreact, I warned myself. There will be plenty of time for overreacting in the years to come. Like a skilled politician, I chose to step around the word all together.

 “You look very colorful and shiny,” I answered.

She seemed happy with my delayed response.

“Thank you,” she said demurely, and she turned to head back up to her room, her oversized shoes clunking across the floor. Just as she left the kitchen, though, she twisted a bit and reached back to unabashedly dig her underwear out of her butt.

Oh, thank goodness, I thought with relief. She’s still my little girl.

It was easy to decide against telling her that digging the underwear out of your butt is most definitely not hot.

She can find that out on her own when she goes to college.

A daughter's call prompts father to fret

My 6-year-old daughter was playing at a friend’s house last week when she called me at work on my cell phone, which is unusual.

She said, “Daddy—“

Stop the tape.

My daughter normally addresses me as “Dad.” I tried for years to get my kids to call me “poppa” because I thought it sounded more affectionate than the dull, monosyllabic “dad,” and it conjured up a warm, Old World feel as if I were Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” When my children were learning to speak, I always referred to myself as “poppa,” but, alas, it didn’t catch on and I got stuck with “dad.”

Unless, I have learned, my little daughter wants something. Then, suddenly, I’m “daddy.”

Very clever of her, I admit, but I’m wise to her machinations so when she called me “daddy” to open the conversation last week, I went on high alert.

Something was up.

Okay, roll the tape.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease –“

Stop the tape.

I have concluded that the number of “Es” my daughter uses when she says please are directly proportionate to the odds that I will deny her request. They are also directly proportionate to how badly my daughter wants to do something, which is usually exponentially compounded by how much she believes I don’t want her to do it.

For example, “Pleeeeeease may I get on the roof with you to hang Christmas lights?”

The very idea that in no way will I allow her to get on the roof with me to hang Christmas lights heightens her desire to get on the roof with me to hang Christmas lights. That accounts for three Es. The other three Es come from her almost certainty that my answer will be “uh, no.”

Is that clear? Maybe a formula will help.

If E equals the number of Es in please, O equals odds of denial, D equals my daughter’s desire, and NA equals the Not Allowed quotient, the formula would look something like this:

E=O=DxNA^x

So with three Es in her please when she called, I further knew something was up.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease—“

Stop the tape.

That background noise, I hear? It’s giggling. Two of my daughter’s friends are giggling, and I can picture them huddled around the phone. Giggling friends in the background never denotes anything good.

I braced myself, which involved holding my breath.

Roll it.

“Daddy,” she said, “pleeease can I paint my fingernails?”

I exhaled.

Was that all? Clearly, my worry was misplaced. The girls were just having a little game of dress-up. There’s no harm in that. I came this close to blurting, “Sure, hon. Of course you can,” when I caught myself. Rash replies I have learned can lead to unfortunate misunderstandings.

“You said I could paint my fingernails.”

“But I didn’t mean with superglue!”

Perhaps a little more probing was called for.

“You mean with fingernail polish?” I asked. “And just your fingernails? You’re not going to paint your nose or elbows or anything?”

She assured me it was with fingernail polish and just her fingernails.

“Well, then, sure,” I said.

And she said thanks and bye and hung up.

I immediately started worrying again because the other thing I’ve learned is that the speed with which my daughter concludes a conversation is directly proportionate to the degree to which she believes she got away with something.

It turned out I had nothing to worry about because she and her friends had only painted their fingernails. On the other hand, I clearly had a lot to worry about.

One day, I fear, that call is going to come not from a 6-year-old friend‘s house but from a tattoo parlor or from some place where you can get a nose pierce or buy a too-tight pair of shorts or from a party where I can hear loud music in the background (which is way worse than giggling). The conversation will begin much the same way, I’m sure.

“Daddy, pleeease . . .”

I worry about that. I worry a lot about that.

But then I think, “Hey, at least she called. That’s a good sign. If you insist on worrying, maybe you should worry not about when she calls, but when she doesn’t.”

And that to me sounds like a good approach because when it comes down to it, no matter what she wants to do, I most definitely want her to call.

Pleeeeeeeese.

Being nosy carries a price

Early in my marriage, I had a discussion – okay, probably more like a heated debate– with my wife after I declared I would have no reservations about secretly reading our children’s journals or diaries or letters or e-mails (blogs were still well in the future, but they would have been on the list, too, for sure).

It was my responsibility as a parent, I argued, to stay well informed of my kids’ thoughts and tribulations.  A parent should be in tune with their child’s worries, concerns, hopes, and anxieties, I said.  That’s how you don’t become one of those parents surprised to learn your kid is building Molotov cocktails in the garage. If that kind of parental awareness required me to casually glance at their journals or e-mails every now and then, I was all for it.

My wife was appalled by my stance.  She was annoyingly insistent on referring to what I called my parental responsibility as “invasion of privacy.”

“I’m not invading anyone’s privacy,” I said, irked by the audacious accusation.  “I’m just finding out what’s going on.  That’s not invasion of privacy.  That’s loving concern.”

“You’re just nosy,” she said.

“Bah,” I said.

It’s probably been 10 years since we had that discussion and my position hasn’t changed much, except to acknowledge I have learned that my wife may have been right.  In addition to a sincere interest in what is going on in my children’s lives and minds, I might just be a tad nosy.

I did not gain this insight from reading anything written by my children, however, which makes what happened all the more unfortunate.

One of my brothers was going through a rough period last year and I gave him a simple black journal with the suggestion he use it as an outlet for his thoughts and experiences.  I thought it might help because I believe in the positive power of the written word.  I wasn’t sure he would write in the journal, but he acted appreciative.

A couple months later, he and I spent a quiet afternoon at his home watching football.  It was a fine time of brotherly bonding.  Things took a disastrous turn, though, when on a trip to the bathroom, I was pleasantly surprised to see the journal I had given him months back on a shelf beside the toilet.

Huh, I thought.  I wonder if he’s writing in it.

I reached for the black book.

Now, I contend to this day and will unto the grave that all I intended to do was check to see if my brother was using the journal.  I did not intend to read it – that would have been nosy.  I was just curious, and that’s not nosy.  (I am adept at drawing fine distinctions to justify my actions.)

With one hand, I braced the spine of the book with three fingers and used my thumb to splay the white lined pages.  Writing filled the front.

Great, I thought, he’s using it.

And then my brother pounded at the bathroom door, and I flinched.  A good indicator of whether you’re up to something you shouldn’t be is flinching.  The innocent don’t flinch.

The flinch caused me to lose my grip on the journal, and it tumbled from my hand.  I moved to catch it, but only managed to knock it at a downward angle.

Oh, how I wish I could report that falling journal filled with my brother’s deepest, most private feelings landed on the floor.  Oh, how I wish I could say it landed in the sink or on the counter.

But it most certainly did not.

No, my brother’s journal, given to him out of love and concern and holding a handwritten record of his daily contemplations, landed smack-dab in the unflushed toilet.

I cannot recall being so mortified.

I retrieved the journal from the toilet bowl and began frantically dabbing it with a towel.

“What are you doing in there?” my brother called.

“Nothing,” I said with a hint of panic.  “Just finishing up.  Be out in a sec.”

I hastily returned the still-soaked journal to the shelf and opened the door.  My brother stood there, eying me suspiciously.

“Were you reading my journal?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said, pushing past him.  “Let’s go watch football.”

But I must have failed to conceal the guilt radiating from my face because he walked into the bathroom and took his journal from the shelf.

“Why’s it wet?” he asked.

“Got me,” I said.  “Come on, let’s go watch some football.”

He raised the journal to his nose.  “Why,” he asked, “does it smell like pee?”

Yes, well, I had no good answer for that one.  I broke down.  I confessed all.  I begged his forgiveness, I pled innocent intentions, I condemned gravity for its folly.

“I flinched!” I cried.

My brother shook his head in amazement and disgust.  To have looked in his journal was bad enough, but to then have dropped it in pee took the invasion of privacy to a whole different level.

My brother has since forgiven me, but I learned my lesson that day:  never invade someone’s privacy while using the privy.   When I next look at my kids private writings, I’ll make sure first that I’m well away from all sources of water and I’ll use two hands. 

Some moments define a parent forever

It isn’t fair, but it is true, that parents are often defined in their children’s minds by random inconsequential moments that somehow create lasting and overarching imprints.

These snippets of memory stay with a child into adulthood and are drawn upon, no matter how false or incomplete they may be, to illustrate their mother or father’s personhood.

Take an average morning some months ago when I was readying for work and my children for school.

With a towel wrapped around my waist I stood at the bathroom sink preparing to shave. My 11-year-old son knocked on the door and announced he needed to brush his teeth.

“Come on,” I said. “Hurry up, I need to shave.”

As he was assembling the tools for teeth brushing, I asked if there was anything going on at school that day.

“We might have another substitute teacher,” he said.

“Another?” I said. “Is your teacher sick?”

“Yes,” he said. “You want to know something weird? We had a substitute teacher yesterday and the day before that and they were both named Mrs. Jones.”

That was a coincidence, I conceded.

And then, without thinking about it at all, I made one of those lasting impressions in my son’s mind. One he is likely never to forget. One he pull from the time vault whenever he is trying to convince a friend – or a shrink -- that his father was bizarre.

“You know what you should do if you go in today and your teacher is Mrs. Jones?” I asked. “You should go up to her and sing,” and I grabbed a hair brush off the counter and held it up like a microphone and belted out, “Me annnd . . . Mrs. Joooones, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones. We got a thing goin’ on.”

I thought it was a pretty fine, throaty rendition of the R&B song by Billy Paul, but the look on my son’s face was one of pure horror.

He dropped his toothbrush and fled the bathroom, leaving me standing there in a towel holding a hairbrush microphone.

“She’ll think it’s pretty funny,” I called after his hurriedly retreating back.

I knew immediately the import of the moment. There was no taking it back. The damage was done.

Years from now, my son will relate to friends or his wife – or his shrink -- how his father was a bit of a nut.

“My father thought he was funny. He used to stand in front of the mirror in a towel and sing like a maniac into a hairbrush,” he’ll say.

“One time!” I will shout down from heaven. “It happened one time!”

But I know it will do no good.

I know because I tell people how odd my father was when I was growing up.

I tell people, for example, how he was a sun-worshipper. Just imagine the embarrassment, I say, of coming home with friends and finding your father stretched out in the backyard on a reclining lawn chair, sipping iced tea, wearing a pair of tight shorts and glistening with coconut-scented Coppertone.

I relate also how he took to wearing fishnet, thin shoulder-strapped tank tops (popular in the late ‘70s) to show off his bronzed torso.

“Oh, the horror,” I thought then. “My father is such a freak.”

Looking back now, it may be a mischaracterization.

It may have been only one summer that he became obsessed with tanning, and who wants to be defined as a person by three months of your life?

Looking back now, I think maybe it was a source of relaxation, a little time away from four rambunctious, ornery boys.

Looking back now, it occurs to me he was probably approaching 40 and may have been going through a period of increased concern about his appearance. It was, after all, around the same time he started working out.

But all that is what I have reasoned; it is not what I remember.

What I remember is the horror.

The difference between my dad then and me now is that I don’t think he grasped the lasting impression he was making on his kids with the sunbathing thing.

Me?

As soon as my son dashed from the room, I knew. I knew what was racing through his mind.

“Oh, the horror,” he was thinking. “My dad is a freak!”

And there was nothing to be done about it but turn back to the mirror, raise the hairbrush, and, in my best impersonation of Rick James, sing, “My dad’s a freak, a super freak.”

I can only hope my son didn’t hear me.

Oh the long-gone days of summer reading

Reading for pleasure has the same fundamental problem as watching baseball.

The same essential quality that makes them such enjoyable pastimes makes them tough to enjoy: they take so much time.

It’s a terrible Catch-22.

I love reading and baseball in part for the time commitment they demand. But it’s a hard love to make work.

I relish the slow, relaxed pace of a ballgame, the batters stepping out of the box to adjust their grip, the pitchers settling into their windup and staring down the hitter, the foul balls, the conferences on the mound.

I wouldn’t want the game speeded up. Baseball isn’t supposed to be fast. It’s supposed to be measured, deliberate and patient, like the sun’s crossing toward the horizon.

But I sure wish the game could be speeded up. I don’t have the time to sit there for hours and watch every nuance. I’ve got a lawn to mow, a car to wash, and kids to take to the park.

I have a similar relationship with reading.

I remember when I was young and taking part every year in my library’s summer reading program. It was fantastic. I kept logs of titles and authors and page counts and plowed through book after book: The Outsiders, Treasure Island, The Cay, Then Again Maybe I Won’t, Johnny Tremaine, Call of the Wild, My Side of the Mountain . . . oh, I could go on and on. What wonderful summers those were. Summers when the reading was easy.

Those days are long gone for me.

When once I was able to spend a couple hours chewing into A Wrinkle in Time or Lord of the Flies, now I must grab my reading on the go, often in 10- or 15-minute increments. When once I could read undisturbed, now when I read my kids and wife believe I’m not doing anything and so feel free to barrage me with questions and requests.

 I just finished re-reading Umberto Eco’s phenomenal and complex The Name of the Rose. Here’s kind of how it went during a dramatic inquisition scene:

“’So,’ Bernard resumed, ‘you confess that you have revered Gherardo Segarelli as a martyr, that ["Can I have a brownie?" "No, you can have a granola bar if you’re hungry."] as a martyr, that you have denied all power to the Roman Church and declared that neither the Pope nor any authority could ordain ["How come she gets a brownie?" "She doesn’t get a brownie; I told her she could have a granola bar." "She got a brownie." "Put the brownie back! Both of you, get a granola bar."} and declared that neither the Pope nor any authority could ordain for you a life different from the one your people led, that no one had the right to excommunicate you, that since the time of Saint Sylvester all the prelates ["Dad! She took my granola bar!" "Give him his granola bar back!" "I didn’t take it, he dropped it!" "It has dog hair on it, can I get another one?" "Bring it here. There, no more dog hair, it’s fine." "I’d prefer another one." "Okay, get another one, I’ll eat this one."] that since the time of Saint Sylvester all the prelates of the church had been prevaricators and seducers except Peter of Morrone, that laymen are not required to pay tithes to priests who do not practice a condition of absolute perfection and poverty as the first apostles practiced [phone rings].”

By which time I couldn’t even remember who was talking and what the poor monk stood accused of.

No. the reading is no longer easy, but I persevere.

One day it may be all I have.

The torment of young love is inconsolable

My heart is sore for my son.

He learned the other day from a gaggle of girls in the school halls that the lass he longs for likes another.

Tell me there is anything worse, and I’ll call you a liar.

I knew something was wrong a couple nights ago when from his darkened room I heard come a mournful love ballad by James Blunt. It played once, and then again, and again. No way was that good.

An 11-year-old boy listens to a song about unattainable love three times in a row, up in his room, with the lights off, for only two reasons: he fell asleep immediately after accidentally hitting the repeat button with a bony elbow or, he is one lovesick puppy.

And the first reason never happens.

I trod up the stairs, knocked at his door, and poked my head in. I asked how he was doing and he gave the ubiquitous answer of “fine.” I asked what was up and he gave the other ubiquitous answer of “nothing.”

It’s funny, isn’t it, how so often “fine” means “miserable” and “nothing” means “so-much-I can’t-even-quantify-it-so-please-don’t-ask-me-to-try-to-explain.”

But the boy couldn’t fool me. I could read the subtle signs that told a different story, like the way his face was plainly contorted with anguish.

I sat on the side of his bed.

“Did something happen with a girl?” I asked.

He gave a sigh of despair and told me what he had learned that day about the girl he has loved since first grade falling for some other guy.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said. “It’s driving me crazy.”

And with that I was 11 again and my heart became a lump of dull rock. It was not simply that I recalled my own first crush. It was that I literally re-felt the torment of that crush. Whatever the actual etymology of “crush,” I know now we use the word because when the feeling is not returned it is like having your heart crushed under the weight of forlornness.

A weight three decades old bore down on me.

How is it, I wondered, that no one wise ever warned me that wrapped up in raising kids are wrenching moments when you are thrust back into your own childhood?

I fell in love with a girl in the second grade. She held my heart for six years, but never handed me hers. It was torture. I once asked her to list all the boys in my class, cleverly thinking that I would be able to at least discern my ranking in her eyes. She named me last.

Oh, the suffering! Driven to despair, I promptly researched the French Foreign Legion, only to learn I was too young to enlist. I had no better luck with Tibetan monasteries.

Solace was nowhere to be found. I was condemned to wretchedness.

Adults who find crushes cute do so only because they have sealed off their childhood hearts and do not remember. But I do remember, and there is nothing cute about it.

“I know how you feel,” I told my son. “It’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

I told him about the girl I loved when I was his age and how I was cast into hopelessness and gloom when she did not return my ardor.

“Do you know what I found helped?” I said.

“What?” he asked into his pillow.

“Absolutely nothing,” I said. “If I knew I’d bottle it and we would be exorbitantly wealthy.”

He didn’t laugh.

“I do know this,” I said. “As miserable as a girl is making you feel right now, one day you won’t be able to stop thinking about a girl who won’t be able to stop thinking about you either and she will lift you a million times higher. That’s how love works.”

“That doesn’t help,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “Nothing does. Just don’t try to run off and join the French Foreign Legion. They won’t take you. I already tried.”

I rose and left the room. As I closed the door, I heard the first strains of that love ballad start to play again.

Being a father is most difficult when there is nothing you can say or do to make things better.

Love works that way, too.

Regret is driving force behind change

I catalog regrets. I keep a running list of personal regrets, family regrets, career regrets, childhood regrets, romantic regrets, financial regrets, and a burgeoning category of miscellaneous regrets. It’s a long list of things I wish I had or hadn’t done and had or hadn’t said.

I regret, for example, that in elementary school one year I joined in with friends to tease and ostracize a fourth-grade classmate. It was mean and cowardly and if I could go back I would change that.

I regret succumbing to shyness once in high school and not waving at a girl who waved at me. I chose instead to pretend I didn’t see her simple wave and turned away. I should have waved. I think now I may have lost a possible friend (or, who knows, maybe even a date!).

I regret once telling my wife her new haircut made her look like a boy. I regret that one a lot because I’m not sure she has yet forgiven me.

I could go on and on. They just keep coming. So I have grown accustomed to living with regret. Regret, I have concluded, is a cornerstone of life, a natural by-product of the stubborn, steady, one-way flow of time and the inherent backward-reaching character of memory. From the conflicting nature of time and memory emerges regret.

An uncle of mine once alleged proudly that he carried no regrets, and even though I was only 15 or 16 at the time I remember being flabbergasted.

No regrets? How was that possible? Even by my mid-teens I had compiled a pretty impressive regret catalogue and could not imagine a man in his late twenties or early thirties as living with no regrets.

“He’s either a liar or a fool,” I thought.

“If you could go back, you wouldn’t change a thing you did?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Those things are what made me who I am today.”

I pondered that a bit, and decided my uncle must hold a fairly high opinion of the man he was that day. He must have been pretty pleased with who he was.

If his personhood were a cake just out of the oven, I imagine him looking it over, taking a small taste and declaring, “Scrumptious! Wouldn’t change a thing!”

I’m a different kind of baker, I guess. I tend to think maybe a little more cinnamon or a touch less nutmeg might be an improvement.

And that is how I have come to regard regret: as an opportunity to change my personal recipe.

I was recently reviewing my regrets for 2007, and contending for the top spot was my forgetting to attend a valued friend’s wedding.

That’s right. You have every reason to be horrified by the idea. It’s not that he and his wife unexpectedly eloped; it’s not that I didn’t receive an invitation well ahead of time; it’s not that the wedding was on some distant island to which I couldn’t afford the airfare; it’s not that I was suddenly stricken with smallpox and felt I wouldn’t be welcomed.

No, I forgot. I was mowing the lawn on a Saturday afternoon when I abruptly pulled up short at a startling thought: “His wedding’s today!”

I checked my watch. My faulty memory was running about two hours too late. I had missed the entire affair.

Even I could not comprehend the depth of my stupidity. How hard is it, I thought, to check a calendar every once in a while so that you have an idea of what’s happening – oh, maybe tomorrow, for example? Weddings don’t exactly sneak up on you.

How do you tell a friend, “Yeah, sorry I didn’t make your wedding, but I forgot”?

You can’t, that’s how. You have to make something up. You have to say something like, “Wow, I’m so sorry, but I woke up in the morning  and I . . . had . . . leprosy. Yeah, very bizarre. Don’t worry, it’s all gone now. Doctors said it was a rare 24-hour variety, but they really discouraged social gatherings for a while.”

There was no way to make it better. There was no way to appologize enough. Missing the wedding immediately became a deep and abiding regret that I shall carry the rest of my days.

But I am determined not to register another regret like it.

Last week, I purchased a pocket calendar that I intend to carry with me everywhere and refer to constantly. I am writing everything down and will not forget another important date.

I can change.

Okay, it may not work, but I would regret not trying.