Isobel: "Watch this one Daddy."
Daddy: OK, watching."
Isobel: (run, run, run) "Yaaahhh!!!" ( Ga-Splosh!!!)
Daddy: "Very nice. At least a 6.45 from the Scottish judge.
Isobel: "What!?!?"
Daddy: "Skip it."
Isobel: "OK Daddy, watch this one."
Daddy: "Watching, go on."
Isobel: (run, run, run) "Yaaahhh!!!" (Ga-Splosh!!!)
Daddy: "Very nice, Pick."
Isobel: "Daddy!!?!"
Daddy: "Yes My little water Lilly?"
Isobel: "You said the same thing on my last dive. Say something different, something good."
Daddy: "OK honey, you're as graceful as a hand grenade."
Isobel: "Graceful!!??!? Pfffft. I'm not doing ballet."
This past weekend, I swallowed a tough pill. I am having to come to the realization, that my little girl is well and truly just that. A little girl. This past weekend, Isobel went to her first tea party. With real tea, not just water in tea pots. (Izzy told me to put that bit in.)
I'm a guy and though we had many playtime tea parties with Mrs. Nesbitt and the late Juicy Lucy as well as her other dolls, I am at a loss for the correct etiquette of a real tea party. I always have visions of little old ladies, gossiping and stuffing cucumber finger sandwiches into their faces. All the while slurping sweet milky, lukewarm tea. Hell, even The Boy though Izzy would need gloves to go to this thing. What could my little girl, my tattoo wearing, black make up smearing, death metal screaming little bff want with that kind of thing? Everything it had to offer apparently...
She woke up early, earlier than usual but no earlier than I expected. Mrs. Narrator got up with her and I followed soon after. And so did the questions. "When should I start getting ready?" she asked.
"Not for a while yet." said Mrs. Narrator.
"Daddy, are you driving me to the tea party or is Mummy?"
"Probably I will, my car is first in the driveway." I said.
"No it isn't, you're car is last in the driveway but thanks for driving me." she replied.
She had gotten up around 9:00 and the tea party was at 1:00. The equation would go roughly as follows. The number of questions asked and with what frequency is directly proportional to the number of hours remaining before departure to the tea party. Four hours until tea party equals four questions every four minutes. It's only theoretical... You get the idea.
She didn't want to eat breakfast, not much anyway and absolutely refused to eat lunch, for fear that it would ruin her appetite.
"There are going to be sandwiches at the tea party."
"Finger sandwiches?" I asked with a little dread in my voice.
"Oooh god, no. Who would eat that?" she spat back.
I knew she was confused about my meaning but I thought better of trying to explain what I meant. Letter her have her own impressions of what was going to happen at this rotten, girly party. I might get lucky and she might forget this whole business and come back to the Daddy side.
The time came and she hurriedly got ready. I've never seen her so co-operative to get cleaned and polished before. Maybe we should tell her there is a party she's been invited to the next time we need to get her cleaned up. (Though she is actually pretty good about it now that she has become fascinated by the game show booth shower)
The little girl that came down the stairs was NOT my daughter...well of course it was but the little girl that came down the stairs was acting a little bit shy and maybe a little apprehensive about being so dolled up. She didn't burp or fart or swear once... OK really, who's kid was this?
I have to say that in spite of all of that, she really did look very pretty and I was more than a little proud at her for wanting to go all out for this party. It's the kind of thing I always wanted to be invited to as a kid. (No you fool, I didn't want to go to a tea party) I always wanted to go to a party where you dressed up. Still don't know why, I loathe wearing a tie. Now what really made this all worthwhile to me, what the true icing on the tea party birthday cake for me was that the second we walked in, every little girl in that room(and there were an uncomfortable number of them) screamed out her name and came
running over to be next to her and touch her and hang out with her. When I came back to pick her up the same little girls told her not to go and held onto her thinking it would prevent her from leaving. One of the girls actually picked her up and carried her around the house...it made me smile and feel kind of warm inside. My baby is popular and has a lot of friends that WANT to be her friends. I take heart in the fact that she is popular and still her own person...I don't see that changing anytime soon."Did you have a good time, Pick?" I asked after she got in the car.
"Yep!" (burrp) "We had pop after the tea."
There is nothing wrong with being your own person (which Isobel absolutely is) and being on the fringe because your a little different or a little weird or a little left of the dial. I have been like that most of my life. But in some ways I secretly wanted to be one of the popular kids...just for a little while anyway. Just as long as I didn't have to wear a polo shirt or deck shoes. I guess that's why I ended up with the group of friends I did... I couldn't ever willingly follow the herd the way the popular kids seemed to and dockers just don't hang right over a pair of eight hole Doc Marten's...
I have conceded the fact that she's growing up and becoming more a little girl and less Daddy's little girl. I figured it would happen along the way...just maybe not so soon. I feel fairly certain every father goes through this kind of thing. Children change and grow and become the people they will become.
There are couple of things that remain unchanged. They are things that never fail to make me smile.
If she falls asleep on the couch and I pick her up to carry her upstairs, she will A) Look about the room wildly...(like for real crazy eyes. She scared the hell out of Mrs. Narrator once). And B) she will almost always pat me on the back as I pat her back to take her upstairs.
One of Isobel's favourite weekend morning things is to tell me how bad my breath smells. I f you tell her that everybody (including her) has bad breath in the morning, she refuses to believe it. She thinks it's just me. (I have never shaved on a Saturday morning, I simply wait for the evil of Isobel's breath to melt the hair off my face.
She is brutally honest...with everyone including her friends. Mrs. Narrator came downstairs once after getting ready to go shopping on a Saturday. "OK, seriously, you're wearing that?" she asked.
"Yes," Mrs. Narrator replied. "Why?"
"That does not look good. Seriously."
She had been sick and home from school. Her friend Candace called her up to sing her a song to cheer her up. I myself didn't hear the song. I did hear Isobel say after it was over. "Candace, I didn't really like that song."
Even I am not immune to this brutality. I reached out my had to hold hers as we walked along. "Uh-uh." she grunted.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You have too many tattoos." she replied.
I love the fact that she hears songs on the radio or T.V and then sings them to her friends and says she wrote the. Some of her friends believe that she did...she may have a future in the music industry...or politics...
She is a flat footed farting, giggling, burping, swearing barrel of laughs and six years into this, I can barely remember what my life was like before she came into it...even if I am a shitty parent!
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