“No one ever told me there’d be days like these”. John Lennon’s words never rang so true. I had pictured it all in my mind a thousand times. One day I’d have a daughter, and she would be a little princess. There would be tea parties, and little dresses, and “Good morning, Daddy!” and yes, maybe a few little tears from time to time for me to kiss away. There would be pony rides and trips to Disney World. There would be trips to the mall where complete strangers would stop me and say, “What a perfect, polite little princess you have! How do you do it?” Genetics, I would say. Genetics.
The combination of my genetics with my wife’s genetics has resulted in our four genetic mutations. I’m sorry, I meant children. There’s also Katelyn, my stepdaughter, so we have lots of experience dealing with kids. It turns out, though, that experience really doesn’t help parents that much. Kids have the inborn ability to completely confuse us no matter how much we know because, as I now believe, they always know more.
One morning, around 7am or so, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and finishing the first, of several, cups of coffee. My wife Lynn was getting ready for work upstairs and the house was filled with that great morning sound of silence. It was the first morning in a while that I’d been able to have my coffee alone, without any of the kids or any of the cartoon characters which seem to be wherever the kids are. It was nice. I had just finished with the newspaper and folded it up when I heard someone coming downstairs. It was definitely one of the kids. Not the big one, she stomps. Not my oldest son, he seems to bounce everywhere. Not the baby, he would just … well, I don’t want to think about how he would get downstairs by himself. It was either Sara, age 5 or Elisabeth, age 3. It turned out to be Elisabeth.
Elisabeth is a kid with a unique sense of style. She’ll leave the house wearing only a pair of shorts (backwards) and snow boots. Other times she’ll have on three shirts, a hat and nothing else. Now, you could probably blame that on me, since I am her father and I really should be paying attention to her clothing choices, but that would require diverting my attention from the baby, who is always mulling over various ways to get down the stairs. Plus, I had always considered Elisabeth to be an advanced child. The first big word she learned to say and properly use was, “Delicious”. The second was, “Disgusting”. She could hold an entire dinner conversation using just those two words!
“Elisabeth, do you like your spaghetti?”
“Disgusting!”
“That’s not nice, Sweetheart. WAIT! NO! Get your foot out of your spaghetti!”
“Delicious!”
Just today, I had to use a phrase that I never thought I’d use in my life. Today, I had to tell Elisabeth to “Take those lollipops out of your panties”. Nothing they teach you in Lamaze class properly prepares you for uttering those words and, more importantly, meaning them. When a father begins a sentence with the words, “Take those lollipops out of …” he never expects to finish it with the words, “your panties.” See what I mean? I’m not exactly sure why she would put lollipops (some wrapped, some not) in her panties. I can only assume it’s because she needed to put them somewhere and none of the shirts she was wearing had pockets and she wasn’t wearing any pants to start with. I guess she had simply run out of options. At age three, she had yet to discover the womanly joy of carrying a purse. So, a word of advice for you younger guys out there. Don’t ever criticize your wife or girlfriend for the multiple purses she has or eventually will have. Now you know what the second storage option is.
“Elisabeth, take those lollipops out of your panties! That’s disgusting.”
“Delicious!”
Still, she is one of my little princesses. I heard her come down the steps and walk across the hardwood floor in the foyer. She entered the kitchen dragging her little blanket behind. In the other hand she held the bear she sleeps with. She silently approached me and put her little tired head on my leg. In my morning bliss, I heard her say,
“Good morning, Daddy”.
“Good morning, sweetheart”
“I love you, Daddy”
“I love you too. Want to see the sports section?”
“I love that, Daddy! Will you read it to me?”
“Of course I will, Princess”
But that’s not what I heard. Not even close. What I heard was,
“I need ham”
“Ummph?” I replied with all the intelligence I could muster. I went to college, you know.
“I need ham”, she said, this time with emphasis, so I would get the point.
I began to gather my thoughts. Why does she want ham? I wondered. Is she going to eat it? If not, where is she going to put it? I decided that the best thing for me to do was to feign ignorance. And lack of ham.
“We don’t have any ham, sweetie, how about some …”
“Bum?”
That’s “gum” for those of you without a three-year-old.
“No”, I said, still reeling from the exchange.
Then she just wandered off. Apparently, she woke up that morning and said to herself, “The first thing I’ll do is go to Dad and ask for ham. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go for the gum. If he won’t give it to me, I will NOT read the sports section with him”. It was at that moment that I realized that I had to start writing this stuff down. There must be some record of, “I need ham” for future generations to learn from, for scholars to debate, for institutions of higher learning to achieve higher learning from. Actually, the future generations and I are both lucky there were no “s” sounds in that phrase, as Elisabeth refuses to use the “s” sound and changes them to “h” sounds. Other kids get to watch “Snow White”. Elisabeth calls that movie, “Ho White”, which, frankly, sounds a lot more interesting to me.
“Strange days, indeed.”