A woman I love

There is this girl that I know.

I was there when she was born. It was not a pretty evening. Well, in some respects it was a spectacular evening. Her mother was and remains an exceptional beauty, even when giving birth she was at peace. In fact, while giving birth to this girl, a nurse asked me if I had a camera, although when she asked me that I was face first in the receiving area of child birth and I commented that I doubted anyone would want a picture of what I was viewing and the nurse said no, look at the face of the mother. She was deeply at peace, almost tranquil, and impossibly beautiful. The girl being born would end up at least as beautiful, but not on the night of her birth.

No, the night she was born the girl was angry and she would remain that way for many years, in fact, as I write this, she is plotting new ways to take over the world, possibly the universe and dammit all to hell if you have any plans to stop her.

While her mother was at peace the girl came out congested and a little pissed off at that slight imperfection. Almost immediately a doctor used some sort of micro plunger to remove some sort of goo from her nasal passage and she was breathing, but her baby eyes lit into the doctor and I am sure that even now she is plotting her revenge. She started loud and stubborn and she remains so.

Which may be why I love her. Deeply. What we see in our children is often the people we may not appreciate or even like so much in ourselves. When my daughter picks a fight with me over whether or not she should have to clean windows, the argument, the sheer will power to argue over something so trivial, is a part of me that I really dislike. When a co-worker recently asked me to change the toilet paper in the women’s restroom at work, I argued that since I was a man and therefore never used the women’s restroom, at least to the vast majority of my offices knowledge, I should be the very last person to be required to change anything in the restroom. Argument won, but for what purpose?

This girl came out a bit ticked off and she has been something of a hurricane since then. A couple of brief stories. Once she could walk, which if memory serves me correctly was at about a week old, she started to torment her ultra calm older brother. If her brother had some sort of Buddhist zen thing going, she had gale force winds that could magically create a tornado in a second. She would bop into a room, her brother laying on his back in the middle of the floor, staring at the ceiling, possibly watching dried paint dry a little more, and she would pounce, first throwing her entire little body onto him, then running to a far wall, touching it and zooming back, only to catapult onto him and knock him back to the floor. He would scream out in pain, she would be laughing hysterically.

When she was four, and after a particularly harrowing week of her wild and often out of control behavior, her mother I were laying in bed. We had purchased every possible parenting book on raising a hellion, although I am pretty sure the titles were something more sublime, like, “experiencing a wild child” or something sweet like that. The key was, the books were available in the Devil Child section of the bookstore and you could see all the other worn down parents there, bags under their eyes, a look of simple desperation and pained wonder on their wrinkled faces.

My wife was reading a paragraph out loud and she got to a part that said something about the wild 4 or 5 year old will soon grow out of the physical aggressive phase and by 9 or 10 they will certainly be easier to control. I stopped her there. 9 or 10 I said, outraged. She won’t live to see 9-10 at this rate. We both sighed.

She lived. My lord, did she live.

The young woman with a huge brain found books. She devoured books like I devour burgers at a barbeque. Nothing was off limits to her. At 3 she was reading chapter books, at 4 she finished Harry Potter, all of the Harry Potter books that were available. She always had a book with her, a paperback in her backpack, a comic book next to the toilet, she would read the cereal boxes at breakfast. She read everything and she absorbed every last detail. Around five her vocal acumen was surpassing mine, which kind of hurt, but I was still bigger and stronger, but since she could out-smart me almost at will, the physical intimidation thing lasted maybe a week.

She threw herself into things with a passion and when I say she threw herself into things, I do not mean intellectually, I mean physically throwing her body into real objects, like walls, buildings, tress and play parks. Her body was a bruise factory. One time, while at a pediatrician for a yearly exam, she was down to her undies, and there were bruises up and down her body. I was in the exam room and the doctor, unfamiliar with my little hurricane rightfully looked at me and thought he probably had the worlds most abusive father standing right in front of him. He turned to me and looked me directly in the eye and asked me where all these bruises came from and if on cue, my daughter had stood on the examining table and jumped into the sink across the room. I never had the opportunity to answer his question.

After the divorce I had the kids full time. A single father raising a family of three children, my hurricane now perfectly unhappy as the middle child. Then one night, she was attacked by a rottweiler.

These things happen. If childhood were simple, everyone would survive it without scars both internal and external. This young girl, this powerful and brilliant young woman was not going to have it so easy. She was at a friend’s house; this mammoth dog had been friendly and then changed its mind. He had savagely torn into her face, biting her nose, her arm and ripping part of her lower lip almost completely off. I was able to get to the house almost about the same time as the ambulance and for whatever reason, the authorities allowed me to drive her to the hospital rather than transport her in the ambulance.

I spent about an hour reassuring this young girl that all would be all right. At the time I was pretty sure I was lying, but what else could I say under those circumstances? The emergency room surgeon stitched her together; a plastic surgeon did the rest. She survived and in her own way was a much stronger woman for it. For a while she seemed to have a well grounded fear of dogs, but today, as a healthy young woman, that seems to have abated.

I think she took a day off school, but with bandaged on her swollen and bruised face, she returned. She healed, scars disappeared and for the most part, she just rolled with the experience. She was and remains an animal enthusiast. She volunteers at a local shelter, and it seems an hour does not go by that my phone does not ring with the request that we adopt some sort of Pitt Bull or kitten that has lost its way.

It is not just survival that makes someone stronger. There is a particular look in warriors eyes that make you understand that whatever it is you have done to them has only steeled them and made them just a little bit angry. This young woman has been that way for a long time. She is an intellectual warrior in that way. As parents we were able to win some battles, using all sorts of techniques and bribes, but almost weekly, she would figure out the game and beat us at it and in the end, make us look foolish for even trying it.

I wish I could say that our life together has been all sweet and perfect. We have had monumental disagreements. One summer she spent a couple of weeks living in a tent in the front yard, I am not sure if we were on speaking terms. If anyone has ever seen a baseball manager argue a blown call with an umpire you know what an argument might have looked like with my daughter and myself. Face to face, eyes bulging, spittle flying out as we both, high octane language spewing at disciples only dogs really appreciate, going at it. Of course, we have swam in cold water in the dessert, almost drowned in the ocean, white water rafted, painted beautiful pictures, danced to decent music and worked together on a variety of bad video projects. To say we have a complex relationship would be to diminish complexity.

This precious little girl, this amazing and brilliant young student is now a woman. Soon she will leave for Europe for two years of study. In some ways my heart is broken, we have had an 18-year relationship, filled with love and laughter and fights and disappointment and forgiveness and respect. The time has come for her to go out and be who she was destined to be. I have been lucky enough to witness these first chapters of her life.

Those of us lucky to have children and then lucky to have smart children and then luckier still to have smart children who allow us to exist in their lives are blessed. I used to tell this to my fellow stay at home parents, that I was a blessed man to be surrounded by these three amazing children. They have gone and grown up on me, they are leaving, setting out on their own, waving goodbye from the window seat of jet airplanes. I know there will be more, I know this story is not over, and I will forever remember the night when the nurse wanted me to watch the peace and tranquility on the face of the woman who was birthing this powerful, beautiful and brilliant force.

That night I fell in love. Today I am in love. Forever I will be in love with that girl who will always amaze.