So, as I anxiously await the day Makayla comes back home, I’ve realized I’ve got a whole new worry on my hands: how do I decorate her room? Makayla is the girliest girl of all girls ever and I’m not really sure what to do with this. I’m not saying I want her to change or anything; I’m the weirdo who was a boy as a child. I liked Ninja Turtles and capturing horny toads to keep in my wagon and shoving bugs and turtles and frogs in my pocket. I liked being outside and climbing trees and fishing. I lived and breathed sports and hated dresses to the point that I would wear jeans under my Sunday dress at church so I could climb trees with the boys after Sunday School. My mother did not like this and would usually not entertain my manly shenanigans. I remember when I was about five and Mom took us to some child oriented thing and we were playing musical chairs. I won and was told I had won a prize. I went to fetch my prize and saw there was a baby doll and a toy gun. I took the toy gun and Mom made me get the dumb doll instead. I did like some dolls as a child. I liked to dress them and make them have wars with rolled up paper balls. I liked to fashion booby traps and use my dolls as practice targets. I liked to make slingshots and then see how far they could throw various dolls. So I did do some girly things. I remember when I was eleven, Mom brought me some teen magazine thing and told me she wanted me to start reading stuff like that so it would make me more like I girl. I read a few pages in it and decided it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. My mom would always get so irritated with me because I didn’t care about doing my hair or wearing cute clothes. And when I started getting boobs in the sixth grade and was told it was no longer appropriate to chest bump the boys who I dominated in tether ball, I was furious. So, imagine my utter surprise to have a girl child who loves clothes, jewelry, girly toys, and princesses. She has been like this since she was old enough to tell me what she liked. I have tried to get her involved in various sports and she’ll just tell me how much she hates the sun and that “sweating is gross.” When I’ve taken her fishing, she would freak out about how gross the worms were and scream at the sight of a “gross, slimy fish” on the hook. If I lie down in the grass at the park she’ll scold me on getting grass in my hair while furiously trying to clean me up. She nags me about “not dressing up” and is horrified that I don’t wear jewelry. She hates sports with a passion, other than dance and gymnastics. She prefers singing and art and clothes. So that’s how she is and that’s great. A fashionable, artistic, singing kiddo is awesome. I just have no idea what to do with it. I’m assuming this is how a liberal, straight dad might feel after his son announces that he’s gay. He’s fine with it, has no objection to it, doesn’t care either way, but has no idea how to relate to it. Kind of how I relate to over the top Christian people. So when I started to decorate Makayla’s room, I knew I was in no position to do this myself. Makayla’s spirit mother, Rachel, is much better at these things. Rachel is Makayla’s spirit mother because they are both artsy and have all sorts of other things in common, most of which I find totally bizarre. They like to paint and do music and all sorts of artsy stuff I don’t know how to do. So we went shopping for Makayla and Rachel pretty was a professional about the things we would get, while being polite about declining my ideas of “cool” stuff. You know these two have a lot in common because I personally witnessed Rachel Porter pressing buttons to the Disney Princess dolls to hear them sing and drooling all over the dumb fake animals that blinked eyes and moved, just like Makayla would do. She also tried to hoola hoop in the store like Makayla would do, and after she decided that would be embarrassing, refused to put the hoola hoop in the basket and just carried it around with her everywhere, just like Makayla would do. She showed interest in all sorts of child board games that I have no idea how to play, just like Makayla would do. She patiently explained color pallets and schemes and matching, just like Makayla would do. She told me the pillow I thought was cool was for old people, just like Makayla would do. Then she made me go to the CD section to look for some person I’ve never heard of, just like Makayla would do. And then she saved me from near catastrophe while we were loading everything into the back of my truck and the wind nearly blew the wall mirror out of my hands by basically tackling it and saving the day, something Makayla would do. Makayla has saved (or at least attempted to save) the day many times by letting me know my jeans had split in three places while running errands and I wasn’t wearing underwear, and shrieking “don’t you come near the brudder or I’ll kick you” to a Wal-Mart greeter she thought was a genuine monster. Or like the time I caught her shoving pieces of pepperoni into her two month old brothers mouth with her explanation, “he is starving because you said the brudder eats boobs and he told me he thinks he does not want to do that and he won’t even eat my own boobs either so I am going to help him.” Or the time she saw a lady bug on Caleb’s shirt sleeve and proceeded to whack him with her plastic baseball bat in her attempt to save him from the bug that was “going to probably eat his head off!” Or how about the time she went to my flower garden and pulled up every single flower I had planted that day so that “those weeds won’t get your flowers.” Makayla and Rachel are both catastrophe savers. Anyway, thankfully Rachel was kind enough to help me decorate Makayla’s room because I can only imagine my daughter’s horror at what I would have come up with.
No comments:
Post a Comment