Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon,
You're leaving there too soon.
In roughly a month, young Matilda will be turning nine. Nine! Not so long ago, when I met my wife and Matilda, she was barely older than Gertrude is now. She still took naps, drew in scribbles (albeit, very precise scribbles). I’d go visit them and she’d kill me at Barnyard Bingo. Back then, she was afraid of bugs, slides, dirt, the wind, and anything else that wasn’t apparently pretty.
Matilda and Mom used to sit in front of the window, wrapped together in a blanket, watching the rain or the wind blow the grass. She’d put on elaborate productions of interpretive dance and would fudge her Rs into Ws.
She was, unequivocally, a child.
In the ensuing years of our relationship, she’s taught me more than I think I’ve taught her. In the exposed nature of a step-father’s role, where I am being trained and accepted into a pre-existing relationship, the early stages are always shaky and tough. But, more like an adult relationship, Matilda and I grew to love each other. I started out as Gary, moved to Daddy-Gary. There’s a certain security in a relationship that has a specific beginning. Because you learn to love each other, warts and all, through tempers, tantrums, obsessions, arguments, skinned knees and hurt feelings.
Because, let’s be honest, any relationship hurts for a variety of reasons. When you love someone, however, those hurts are just potholes in the road. You shake off the dust and move along to the next stop.
The past years have taught me a lot. I never knew the joy I would feel when I took off her training wheels, or the abject terror of watching her audition for the school talent show (my terror, not hers) and the sheer pain when a friendship of hers was broken. I never dreamed I would cry like a baby when she boarded the bus to go to kindergarten (which she teases me about) or that I would give up waiting at the bus stop after school with a pang of sadness. Despite her insistence that she can make it from the corner to the porch, I still wait on the porch. I just pretend I’m working and not watching her the whole way.
She stands on the precipice of a major life change, one that I believe she’s started easing herself into. At nine, friendships stop being about playing together and pecking orders are established. You start sharing feelings. School gets harder, successes become bigger, failures become more dramatic. At eight, she could still be considered a little girl, not too far from that little blonde who used to collect rocks. At nine, she’s interested in Pop music, dancing with her friends and, yes, gossip.
She’s become a Vulcan in the last year or so. When she talks to us now, she gives us the bare bones info. When something happens that she would have once bounced off the walls for, we got the stock Spock shot of a non-reaction. “Cool”, she’ll say blithely. And that’s it. She’s already moving into her divine indifference phase.
And next it will be make up and boys. Going to movies alone, begging me to drive her to the hot teenie bopper joints. Requests for more CDs will come (the one request I’ll never turn down, I promised) and calls from boys. Fights, conflicts, arguments. Some with me, some with mom, some with her sister, most with her circle of friends. Tears before bedtime will be replaced with tears on the telephone. Tears that won’t necessarily be shared with me.
I look at this kid, not a child anymore, and see how quickly the next five years will go. How much we’ll go through together. And I hope, I truly hope, we’ll value each other through the conflicts and arguments. And I hope she’ll come to me when some jerk boy needs an ass kicking.
Because I’ll do it proudly.
She’s growing. We’re starting to watch from the sidelines, mere advisors in this endeavor. We’ll need to let her stumble, but be close enough to pick her up.
But, for the time being, the child going on woman still plays in the bathtub and still throws her arms around my neck at bedtime and says, “I love you Daddy.” She’s dropped the Gary altogether. And when the going gets tough, she still falls in my arms, sobbing, just like a little girl.
I am a child, I'll last a while.
You can't conceive of the pleasure in my smile.
You hold my hand, rough up my hair,
It's lots of fun to have you there.
God gave to you, now, you give to me,
I'd like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea.
What is the color, when black is burned?
What is the color?
You are a man, you understand.
You pick me up and you lay me down again.
You make the rules, you say what's fair,
It's lots of fun to have you there.
God gave to you, now, you give to me,
I'd like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea.
What is the color, when black is burned?
What is the color?
I am a child, I'll last a while.
You can't conceive of the pleasure in my smile
--Neil Young
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