Learning to be a Stepdad
This piece is inspired by a piece I wrote earlier today
Maybe my daughter will read this: Now with two adorable children, great husband, and a smart, intellectual. I love you, Jill.
I believe in ‘women’s liberation rights,’ but I still like to open doors for women and men and give way if I were first to go through. If I’m seated on a train or other transport and a woman enters a carriage, and there are no seats, I like to offer mine without fear of a young woman telling me she’s just as capable of standing. Young women need to understand good manners to achieve equality. I was raised that way. I believe they should be.
After a year of learning to be a stepfather to a teenage girl, she agreed to join me for dinner at a high-end restaurant in the middle of New York.
When she arrived, it was clear that she had dressed to embarrass me. She wore a feminine, flowy floral dress that dipped deeply at the neck and a silk scarf rolled tight around her neck. Around her shoulders, she wore a red shawl-like blanket and quite a sweet hat, allowing her flowing wheat locks to fall down her back. On her feet were the biggest — the most enormous pair of work boots I’d ever seen. She looked like my favorite clown at a circus. (Let’s give my stepdad a wake-up call!)
I’m not easily ruffled by young liberal women, young men all the time, and some old ones, too. I was wise enough and old enough not to comment, so I hugged her and sat together to enjoy a meal.
Isn’t it wonderful to be at an age where you know what young people will attempt to do to you to test you out? Jill remarked that I had yet to comment on her footwear during dinner.
“I’m sorry, Jill. I never noticed,” I said.
I knew exactly what this would do to her ego. She has one, but mine is more extensive, and I was about to prove it.
Plopping both her feet up on the vacant chair? She attracted the attention of nearby diners. Several delicate lady diners had a certain terror in their eyes. I smiled.
“They’re different,” I said, asking, “are they Doc Martins? Well, no matter, whatever they are, they look cool.”
She plopped them down again.
You know that look when a teenager wants to kill you? I could tell she was mad at me for not asking why she wore such an ugly pair of boots, but I was far too long in the tooth.
“Do you honestly like them?” She asked.
I looked at her. “What’s important, Jill, is that you like them.”
She smiled like there was a victory in that response.
“I knew it, you hate them don’t you. Well, they’re a ‘statement’ about me!”
I didn’t look up from my soup.
“That’s good, we all have to make a statement about ourselves.”
I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Don’t you get mad at anything?”
I’ve been so mad, so fired up, so ready to bust someone’s mouth that I was prepared to explain that getting angry is energy-exhausting and almost always a waste of time?
“Jill, I’ve been so mad so often that the idea of getting mad with someone over a choice of footwear seems ridiculous.”
“You do understand, though,” she said, “the dress tells people I’m a feminist and the boots say, ‘don’t try and kick me around’ just because I’m a woman!”
I smiled at her because she was so beautiful, young, and determined to be something that age prevents her from being.
“You’re smiling at me, you do know it’s patronizing, don’t you?”
That didn’t help; it only broadened, and my lips almost touched my ears.
“That’s it, make fun of me, you always do, I’m grown up, you know, I don’t have to take this.”
“Jill, give me your hat for a moment, and let me have your shawl, will you.” Quizzically, she handed them to me.
“Now, see this.”
I placed the hat on my head and the shawl around my shoulders and sat facing her. She burst into a fit of laughter.
“Now come around here,” I said, and when she had done so, I asked the server to take a photo.
People were looking. Such things do not bother me.
“Jill, I don’t care what statement you’re trying to make, I don’t care a hoot what people think about you or me, I don’t even care if they care or not, I care about you and, to be honest, I don’t see what you’re wearing, I just see you, and there’s nothing you can do to make me see you as something of a ‘statement.’ Your life is hard enough; if you choose to make it harder by drawing attention to yourself, that’s okay.
I can handle that but don’t expect me to see something that isn’t there. I know exactly who you are and everything about you that a father can know. You’ll never surprise or shock me because I know you will love me in time, and that’s the only thing I need to know. Now, if you want to kick something, the leg of the table opposite seems a good idea; she just got her soup.”
Jill didn’t love me more when we left; that would come later, and I’m humbled to say it did.
The only woman I love more in the world is her mother.
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