Love

More Than Bags and Bows, What Girls Want From Their Daddies This Christmas

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“I didn’t really want to run away. I just wanted you to find me and bring me back here and tell me things are going to be okay…like they used to be.”  -Jessica Riggs, Prancer

Perhaps it’s all relative, this being a girl thing. Though I can drive, vote, write a check to a mortgage company, and have bore three children, to many of you my thirty years still leaves me in a class of naïve innocence with plenty yet to learn. Or if you are my husband you charmingly call the silver-haired woman in church next to us, a girl- evoking all the whimsy and femininity I vow to awaken even when I’m old.
Sweet man of mine, please do this when we are both wrinkled and smell like menthol.

Truth be told, pieces of the girl in me never leave. My counselor makes sure of it.
The same longings we discover in the days of pigtails carry into our marriages. What needs are not met as hop-scotch jumping, Miss Mary Mack-reciting elementary students is played out for years in various relationships.

Dads, we need you so very desperately.

We know you’re scared because you didn’t have a dad, or had one that beat you or shamed you or told you that your worth was nothing compared to his work schedule. But we’re scared too. Scared that you’ll live out our childhood not really knowing us.

PURSUIT

It’s a moment that holds so much. You walk in after being gone all day, after we fight with our mothers about when to do homework, and we look to your face. Do you notice our presence? Are you happy to see us? We internalize your expression, too young to disconnect and understand that the scowl around your eyes is from the ass-wipe in your office who badgers you incessantly about the unfairness of life being all your fault. About the numbers not adding up. About the way you question if you can always provide for us with a job you hate.
All we hope is that you’ll want us. That you’ll twirl us, hug us, ask us about the last eight hours and pause in anticipation to know what we have to say. Five minutes of this does more for our hearts than a hundred perfect boxes from the store.
When we’re angrily stomping upstairs don’t let us cry in our pillows forever because if you don’t come for us, that teenage boy with the great hair and not-so-great intentions will.
Teach us that the things we speak, feel, experience- matter to you, and you’ll be pursuing what matters to us.

SAFETY

The sand still lingers on her hands while we cry from the stinging pebbles in our eyes.
Words of hate hang in the whispers of girls who use us to feel better about themselves.
Our kisses leave traces on the lips of the boy who said he’d love us even after we gave him everything.
Empty bassinets, a husband with a private life, a friend’s cancerous death sentence.

We need a safe spot to curl up and ugly sob. And we need that spot to be you.

We don’t need it fixed, though that would be stellar. We need you to listen, validate that what we are going through is in fact nothing of the likes of Friday the 13th (and sometimes it is), and hurt with us. We know the pain won’t go away, but if we have you next to us, somehow it seems bearable.

ANSWERS

I remember it like it was today. The right color eyeshadow and new mascara, so carefully selected from all the others, would make him notice. How I scrubbed my hair in the shower, dried it into submission so it would grace my cheeks in that specific angle I liked, and wore my Sunday best. My Dad will think I’m the most, beautiful, girl.

Airbrushed legs and photoshopped waists are thrown at us with overwhelming speeds. We question our beauty when we don’t know we’re questioning our beauty. And usually the answers we come up with ourselves are nothing less than harsh.

Is this dress pink enough?
Do these shoes match enough?
Have we developed enough?
Are we thin enough?

But really just, are we enough?

We very much need you to answer this for us. See the way our laugh ignites giggles in others. Notice that our giving spirit is striking. Tell us how you watch our hearts grow to love people deeply and how gorgeous you think it is. Remind us when our hair is greasy and we’ve been fevering for days that we are just as captivating as when we’re dressed for Homecoming.

ADVENTURE

Always, Prancer. At the end of the movie Sam Elliott who plays John, the father of precious, chubby-cheeked Jessica, and a man whom I would take to coffee every day just to listen to him talk…sorry, digress.
He takes her against doctor’s orders to a cliff so they can release a reindeer he has hated the entire movie, back to Santa. Jessica searches, wonders, and you can see the excited playfulness on his face when he says, “Maybe he flew. It is Christmas Eve.”

We need you to throw our toddler frames so high above your head that our moms gasp and scold you. We need you to drive the shopping cart through the parking lot like a race car. We need you to tickle our armpits until we pee our pants, and give us our first bouquet of flowers.

We need your sense of risk and for you to teach us how to appropriately push ourselves. Then we’ll know we’re capable when you move us into our first dorm room or apartment. We’ll know the fun is in trying, and failing is allowed.

Dads, we need you. We need you in our lives more than we care if you don’t do it well. So kick your fear of inadequacy in the neck, take us by the hand, and let us know that even if this journey is difficult you “will find us and bring us back and tell us that things are going to be okay.” Believe that you can. We sure do. And it’s truly what we want this season.

Love That is Lost

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It’s an ugly sweatshirt. When I first found it, damp, lonely, and tucked between a pile of forgotten camping gear, Chase advised against finding a spot for it in our closet. I already knew of a place.
And so it came home with me. Since then it has become my favorite. I wear it in the morning when my little one wants breakfast and there is no time for brushing out hair tangles. It stays as housewear because, of course, I do heed some red flags of fashion.

From upstairs I hear the doorbell that sounds too loud against my minimal hours of sleep. The pilling sleeves of my beloved hoodie are pushed to the crooks of my elbows. I’m not presentable per se, but I’m dressed.
Then I see them, two of them all ties and smiles, and there is no escape. I’ve left the front door open. I have no chance to pretend I’m not home. I adjust, tug at the cuffs and scooch the neck opening to try to make up for no makeup, and greet them with circles under my eyes.  

“Hello Ma’am,” he says.
Ick. Singes the ears every time.
“Hi.” I barely respond when he’s already talking again.
“Do you notice how stress is a big part of life these days?”
There’s a measurable pause as if he’s expecting me to say something. I do not.
“I mean, do you notice that we tend to stress more…”
I think, and I’m just guessing here, he thought my bored face meant I wasn’t listening. Really, I didn’t mean to ignore the prompt to speak but I was seriously debating using sarcasm to lay out the last two decades of my panic disorder symptoms. Stress? Yeah, I’m accustomed to the likes of it.
“…as we get older?”
Now listen here, Sonny Boy who thinks I’m a Ma’am. Just because my sun freckles and grays are showing doesn’t mean you can take that tone with me. Kids these days. (He’s probably a baby, like 28 or something. Still.)
But I reign it all in with an,  “Mm, hmm.”
“If I could read you something,” he says with a Bible open right to the rehearsed page, and proceeds with thy’s and thou’s. “Pretty simple, isn’t it?”
He’s so chipper I want to twist his nose. Instead I nod.
“Now, we’d like to give you these pamphlets and if you have your own Bible (Ha. And ha.) you can look up some verses on the back of them.”

Why don’t you ask me if I have a Bible? Or why at this late hour of the morning I’m in raggedy clothes? If you spent five minutes getting to know me you’d understand the reason I look like I can’t wait for you to leave. It’s because I can’t wait for you to leave so I can go back to my youngest girl who was puking while you were likely sleeping last night. So I can finish shampooing apple chunks out of the carpet and bleaching the toilet where the unspeakable happened.

You’re missing me even while you’re looking right at me.

Oh, how many time I’ve done this. When my stance on abortion sets up a blind around the woman who was gutted and now aches from the decisions she’s made. When theological accuracy replaces a hug and an open ear. When my political affiliation alienates anyone on the other “side.” When being right is more important than being a safe place. When a man with a backpack full of pamphlets makes me roll my eyes because I know just as little about him as he does me.

When the mission becomes more important than the person, love is lost.

“We’d like to stop by the next time we’re in your neighborhood. To see how you’re doing,” he says.
I’ll put on my sweatshirt and try not to shush the kids so you think we’re out of town.