September 12: Share Secrets, Poet Dad, Judith Minty, "Celebrating the Mass," Confessions of Saint Marty

When Caroline was in college Annie would spend hours with her on the telephone, and they would talk like sisters.  They would often share secrets...

Annie Ives tries to remain close to her daughter.  Ives has drifted into a pattern of grief:  overwhelming sadness, dark brooding evenings, outbursts of anger followed by immediate remorse.  Annie has become estranged from her long-suffering husband, and she feels her family slowly drifting away.  Caroline is the lighthouse in the turbulent sea of her life.

Last night, my wife and I attended a football game at my daughter's high school.  I am not a fan of sports.  I can count on one hand the number of live football games I've attended in my life.  My daughter, however, is part of the school pep band.  So I went to hear and see her play. 

It was a really cold evening, and, when the sun dipped below the horizon, it was hot chocolate time.  People were screaming and laughing and talking.  Every once in a while, I'd look over at my daughter in the band.  She was purposely not looking for my wife and me.  It was all about her friends and classmates.

I have noticed that my daughter has been pulling away from me a little bit.  She no longer kisses me hello or goodbye or goodnight.  If prodded, she will present her forehead for me to venerate.  I understand why she's doing this.  She's a high school freshman, trying to become her own person.  I'm no longer the cool dad.  I'm the poet dad.  Dance fan dad.  Musician dad.  Embarrassing dad.

When we're together and nobody else is around, she is her old self.  Funny.  Affectionate.  Loving.  This afternoon, we're going to a dance store to purchase a new pair of pointe shoes.  Then we're going to do a little more school clothes shopping for her.  It will be a good afternoon, once she fully wakes up.  Maybe we'll even go to Dairy Queen for ice cream on the way home.  A daddy-daughter day.

I know moments like these are going to be fewer and farther between in the upcoming years.  Soon, I will be the man who doesn't know anything and doesn't understand.  Then, I will be the banker.  Transporter.  Car-provider.  Birthday- and Christmas-present giver.  Curfew enforcer.  Hopefully, I won't have to be the ranter or worrier or reality-checker too much.

I love my daughter and son.  Being a parent has been one of the great joys of my life.  I'm entering a new phase in my parenthood.  I have a received a promotion to father/manager of a teenage girl.

God help Saint Marty.

Celebrating the Mass

by:  Judith Minty

In this hospital room, lacking the hands
of a nurse, I braid my daughter's hair
into corn rows.  She is nineteen now.
When did I stop touching my child?
We have eaten sandwiches brought in and picked
at food on her tray, then turned to the mirror.
Helpless in these weeks of testing, waiting,
we want to alter her life in some way.

I think of those other mothers who have done this,
their backs aching, their hands tightening.
I think of them standing long hours
on porches of farm shacks maybe, or in tenement rooms.
I think of them weaving dark strands
to make their daughters beautiful
after the meals were served, after
the mending, the washing hung, the fields hoed.

Here, a comb sets our boundaries.
Fingers separate and part, we begin
another row:  blond hair lifted, pulled,
the pattern worked in.  I sculpt to the shape of bone.
Now six braids done.  Now an hour.  Now nineteen years.
We learn each other again.  Hands to head,
fingers knitting a cap, we begin
at the temple, around the ear, crown to nape.

Confessions of Saint Marty