Daughters...

The Listening Post arrives accompanied with a John Mayer soundtrack today. Tune in, comment anonymously if desired, and thanks for reading my musings. :-) 

Last evening, after finishing the second helping of a dinner which my 20-something half-sister efficiently shopped for, whipped up, and served, all with with great grace and style (two nights in a row) -- she dozed on the sofa while her 20-something nephew ( my son ) and his girlfriend followed suit on the other couch and the living room carpet. Not long after that, I got on the phone to my oldest 20-something "daughter-by-osmosis" in the midst of a family crisis, and connected with her. In addition to the girlfriend, I have four half-sisters and a sister-in-law ( to their brother ), a quintet of "daughters-by-osmosis", and a daughter-in-law-to-be all in their 20's. I am surrounded by young women waiting to experience life. (I mostly live vicariously through them and make sure they don't turn out anything like me. ;-P )

While we were apart for roughly three decades, my childhood-crush-turned-Life-Love Jonathan became the proud father of five tow-headed girls -- and a equally adorable junior edition of himself. Over the years, as I read his mother's Christmas letters, I pictured his world of Barbies, My Little Pony, and and a endless collection of hair bows in contrast to my existence -- living amongst a plethora of Legos (which seemed to reproduce) and little boys constantly leaping couches like Power Rangers. It's good he had the girls, and not me. He's a very practical, calm, thoughtful, light-hearted person -- exactly what silly girls need in a daddy, and also what the one boy in the sea of Barbies needs in a dad. HA!

I was/am/will always be grateful that I never had daughters. My own existence as one was fraught with emotional peril and battles for survival...and the in-your-face-affection-and-activity of little boys and young men contained far fewer hormonal land mines than the ones I managed to detonate ( or get thrown onto) during my years as a young girl. Odd girl out in a trio of sisters, I never wanted a daughter to undergo the odd-girl-out experience, or suffer under my mostly-hysterical young adult female viewpoint. 

For, although I was a daddy's girl and very secure in that realm, just as I was emerging into the tenuous world of young womanhood (the years when you want your daddy around to measure your latest heartthrob against) the professor/leader/wonderful Daddy I knew regressed into the teenager he'd never allowed himself to be -- and switched gears and families. As a young bride-to-be, I watched as he then literally ran off to another country to begin anew. 

It turns out it was the best for all of us first-edition kids, because he degenerated into something that had no resemblance to the man we knew as the head of our household. The infrequent worst days with us became the norm for the second-edition. Fortunately for them, they spent their childhood in Israel, where there isn't time for nonsense (with the gas masks in the living room and the automatic weapons next to the bed) and so they all survived with the (residual formerly British-occupied Palestine) tradition of oh-well-on-we-go resolve. At least on the surface. 

I personally think we humans, especially daughters, tend to project how we perceive our parents onto the image of God that we have. A loving, caring, involved dad gives the mother security in raising the young ones as well, and that fosters thoughts of a loving, caring, involved Creator in our lives. An emotionally or physically unavailable set of parents fosters the adverse.

A popular song came out a few years back, by the artist John Mayer. The opening lines sum this thought up, quite poetically:

I know a girl • She puts the color inside of my world • But she's just like a maze

Where all of the walls all continually change

And I've done all I can • To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands • Now I'm starting to see

Maybe it's got nothing to do with me

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

On the whole, my father was NOT good to his daughters (or his sons ) -- or either of his wives. The early years were the best... and as it turns out, I was as much of a mess as he, for a very long time. 

"...just like a maze, where all of the walls all continually change..." Still am, occasionally, except the walls only change color now, not shape, with the seasons. God's love for me has built sturdy walls that hold in Jonathan's love and light and laughter -- and mostly block anything unwanted, while we continue the journey we started all those years ago, with all these wonderful 20-somethings in our hearts and lives. 

Here you go, kids. Sage advice, from a pop artist. Sage advice. 

Fathers, be good to your daughters • Daughters will love like you do • 

Girls become lovers who turn into mothers   •    So mothers, be good to your daughters too

 

♪Try to remember the kind of September...♪

"♪Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September♪ When grass was green and grain was yellow.
♪Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."

Darla Eichmann. I think that's how you spelled her name. HA She was the bubbly blonde female lead in Poly High's performance of "The Fantasticks", and for the life of me I can't remember who the male lead was... but this tune has stayed in my heart since middle school. A lovely, lilting, echoing air...a musical version of the breeze currently ruffling the leaves of the trees today.

Try to remember a different September than the one we remember today... a day where my friends Ann and Eva's husbands and my own personal Hurricane (then-spouse )  got locked down at Sheppard Air Force Base... a day when my brother Kirk's son sat on a military aircraft for hours on a tarmac, delayed for deployment because of the Towers' tragedy... a day when my little sister Alyson went into labor... a day when my three young sons, shown here, were on home school while we 'visited' Wichita Falls.

It's hard to remember "when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow..." as Tom Jones wrote in those lilting lyrics. Of course we wept, but not as a nation in mourning...this day in 2001 we wept collectively.

On a lighter note, remember that September has always had the power to make children cry, with the return to school. HA Just trying to lighten the mood. Every September has it's glories and it's sorrows. September 2001? Forever tinged with smoke and flames and loss and disbelief and horror, much like December 1941. 

Today try to balance those memories with the days 'when grass was green and grain was yellow...'. Most of us are grateful for a nation that rises from smoke and flames and loss with a renewed spirit. 

No matter what you remember about this date, remember that we are but passers-by in the annals of time, and that we cannot perpetually live in fear, lest we let the enemies of the past and present retain their power over us. We must live simply, and simply live, regardless of circumstance -- tragedy or victory. 

"♪Try to remember when life was so tender ♪That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender That love was an ember about to billow.

Try to remember, and if you remember...Then follow.♪ Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, ♪ follow, follow."