There has been a lot of talk about dads this last week, so this feels like a good time to highlight the dad in need of the most support:
The dad of teenage girls who are beginning to date.
We are in the thick of this phase right now.
The girls are giggling more and walking around with wild eyes quickly into each other’s rooms to hiss-whisper things they don’t want us to hear.
At almost 14 and 16, I hoped we’d have more time to deal with this with our middle daughters, but who am I kidding, really?
By the time I was 13 I had a photo album that I had filled full with cute boys I’d cut out of magazines like I was doing a DIY mail-order catalog for myself.
Chloe, the older of our middle two, has batted her eyes since the time she was barely a toddler and got seated behind 8 Italian college exchange students on a plane.
It was like the veil dropped then, and her eyes were opened to everything her future could be.
My oldest daughter, Alena, married the first man she dated.
They are unlike any two I’ve ever known: Head over heels in love, and completely drama free.
He treats her like an absolute queen.
They fell in love, went swing dancing a lot, and now they are nearly to year three of marriage just like that. Badda boom, badda bing.
But, Alena always did lull me into a false sense of ease.
She never caused any issues growing up.
She got straight A’s, she told me the truth, and most of her outings were with the youth group from church to do innocent things like going bowling.
I never once had to go out looking for her in the dark. I never once worried about who she’d grow up to be.
The worst thing she ever did was hoard cups and wrappers in her room.
I thought that was such a big deal then, but I now know those ant filled ice cream cups would look like an actual field of daisies compared to what was coming with the next three.
I love to tell Justin that Alena is proof that my genetics are superior to his.
I mean, look at her (mine from a previous relationship)
and then look at the ones he contributed to over there – Like three of The Shining twins.
These middle two now? (my husband, Justin’s, first two biologically) They are a completely different breed.
These days Justin spends a lot of time leaning diagonally on the couch, looking like a human version of a Coping Ability Meter pointed towards “low,” with an expression that makes me wonder if he’s finally dead this time, or just asleep with his eyes open again.
He asks things from a sound sleep as they talk to me, like, “Who now? What? Who did?!”
and I just pat him and tell him not to try to keep up, because it’s an impossibility, in a tone that makes me seem like an in-home care worker explaining things.
“Here are your meds, Honey.”
I have taken to seeing the questioning, pleading look in his eyes trying to figure them and their stories out, and I just say “No one knows,” proving I know what he’s thinking, before he even says a thing.
I don’t know if it is normal, but I feel like with a dad of all daughters, you maybe try to involve them to a certain point, but you try to also guard their health and cardiovascular safety.
There is sometimes a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
I often have him walk away when we get rung up at Target now so he won’t see the total on the receipt after these girls have blown through the make-up aisle building up a mound of things.
He just goes and stands by the Icee machines at the front, and reads their flavors.
It’s the system we’ve worked out.
We’ve found this is best for everyone in the end.
We can all leave, then, happily.
The other day Chloe asked permission to meet a boy at the movies that she’s been talking to for awhile, but we still had yet to meet.
We agreed that she could go, but informed her we would expect to meet him and see his face before just dropping her there on the sidewalk by the bus terminal that smells strongly of pee, so we’d at least know how to identify him in some kind of line-up,
should there ever be a need for it.
Her head flew back at this news and she groaned, “Please no! Not NOW! That is SO embarrassing! Can’t you wait until the end, at least?” She told me we were “being cringe,” but these days I wear being cringe like a bright feather boa flung wildly around me.
We didn’t back down, and as soon as we pulled up,
I rolled my window down and waved the boy she pointed out over to the car.
Meanwhile, Chloe writhed in the back seat, worrying over just how mortifying we’d be.
He looked like a nice boy, with soft eyes and a kind voice.
My first impression was really good,
But, when I was finished with my introductions, that’s when Justin extended his hand, reaching over my lap, from where he sat in the driver’s seat.
And he TRIED, you guys.
He really did,
but I could see a new light take over in his eyes that I had not previously seen.
The boy looked nervous, almost like a frightened Bush Baby, but offered his hand back in return silently as Justin introduced himself and started a whole speech about how “he hoped he knew this was his beloved daughter, and he expected her to be treated well, so he intended to know exactly what type of person he was dropping her off with.”
It was less of a “Nice to meet you,” than an
“I’ve got eyes and ears of people with neck and face tattoos hidden all over this street.”
In the distance I thought I could hear the previews starting before their movie.
The boy agreed that knowing who your daughter was with was important, and assured us that he could be trusted with her.
You would think that is where it would have ended,
but Justin maintained the grip of that boy’s hand for an uncomfortably long time right there like a roller-coaster bar over the top of me.
I gently wiggled my hand free, and tapped on their handshake (if you can call it that) with my index finger, nervously laughing.
“Babe, you have to let go of his hand. Don’t be creepy on the first time you even meet.”
Chloe stood there looking like she was begging me to PLEASE just DO SOMETHING.
But he didn’t let go.
Not until he basically made that poor boy do a lie-detector test and background check right there on the sidewalk.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been hiding some kind of fingerprinting kit that he’d gotten off the Internet in that extended palm that could give an instant forensic read.
He held on so long I’m not all too certain he and that boy are not common law married now in at least one state.
“And do you, Justin Green, take this boy that you positively refuse to set free?”
About an hour later, as we waited to pick Chloe up, I texted her to ask how it was going,
and if her dad’s handshake had scared him off.
She said no, but that she had noticed as he’d paid for concessions,
his hands were shaking a little bit when he reached.
When she asked the boy about it, she reported he only replied, “Your dad seems nice. His handshake was strong.”
When I informed Justin that his scare tactics had not, in fact, worked, he said,
“I guess it’s onto phase two then: Pick her up not wearing a shirt, with a strangely sweaty belly.”
I think moms mostly want to see their daughters happy, and well-loved by whoever they’re with, while dads, on the other hand, prefer them forever single, slightly homely and piercingless, locked up in their bell-towers, singing mournful songs to their only other friends besides him in the world:
A handful of woodland creatures, and the dark, howling wind.
A few days later, and both middle girls were asking to have the boys they were interested in over to our house on the same exact day.
For them the pressure was lessened, the band-aid had been ripped.
Poor Justin barely had his toes in the water.
Handshake Boy showed up with flowers for me. Automatic three gold stars.
He apparently saw the bar set and showed he could raise it, even after such an interrogation on day one.
I spent the whole time they were here trying to get to know them both better.
Justin spent the whole time trying to hide behind our house plants so he could keep one squinty eye on all of them.
Later that night he and I went to the store, and as I rang things up in self-checkout,
I heard him say, “Kerri, Kerri, look,” and I glanced over just in time to see him staring into the surveillance camera with a giant package of beef jerky sticking obviously up out of the collar of his shirt like he had just dared himself.
I think that guy was probably just begging to be taken in for shoplifting or SOMETHING to a quiet little jail cell where everything was simple again, for just a short time, even.
White walls, plain bunk, toilet seat, his lone little visiting raven he names “Lavelle…”
There he wouldn’t have to return home to thinking about these teen boy visitors.
Just a divided tray with a slice of corn bread, and a cart with a thing he pretends to read.
The clerk at the store came over, one I know well, and seeing him, smirked asking if we needed any help with anything.
I told him that I was fine, but my husband was REALLY not.
Teen boys exist and we have all these daughters.
We could have stopped at the easy one,
but then we added those last three,
and it has all clearly left him feeling rather unwell.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
