So I was sitting at our YMCA the other day, dutifully
watching my beloved nine-year-old daughter, Alexa, during her fourth round of
intensive swim lessons (I should probably
note here that she has remained classified as a “Polliwog”—or, in kid-centered, “everyone-gets-a-trophy” Y-speak:
the level directly above “Sinking Stone”…I’m
not kidding. My angel-faced, fifty-five
pound wisp of a girl floats across the land with the grace of a dandelion puff,
but somehow ejects an invisible eighty pound anchor from her arse when she hits
the water), and, after eight weeks of daily lessons, I’ve yet to witness
any significant improvements in her abilities (unless you count not drowning as
a skill). However, on this particular afternoon,
I am utterly astonished by what I observe.
Alexa, standing at the edge of the oh-so-scary deep end—all
pale skin, twitching elbows, and knocking knees—was vigorously shaking her head
at her gracious and kind teacher (the
fourth in a series of wonderful, supportive young women who had coddled,
nurtured, and encouraged her to acclimate and accept the grace given to those
with confidence in their aquatic endeavors) floating in the water before
her, arms open in a welcoming embrace.
For five, full minutes, I watched the two of them in a bizarre dance of
warring wills. It went something like
this—
Teacher: patting
the water, extending the day-glo colored foam noodle to bridge the space
between them, gently coaxing my reticent little wogger (hipster-speak for “polliwog”) with a warm smile and a firm
direction while hiding her growing exasperation; Alexa: skittering to the edge of the platform, toes curling over
the brink of the board, tilting forward…then, arms flailing, leaping back to
the safety of the pool deck.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
[This is not the unusual part.
This was becoming a carefully calculated habit. But
wait…]
Deadlocked in this watery waltz of authority and
acquiescence, one of the lifeguards eventually approached them at the edge of
the pool. He was all muscles and
tattoos, a small-town Channing Tatum (at
least from where I was sitting in the remote, “parents-we-don’t-want-you-interfering-thank-you”
observation deck) and I watched as he spoke to Alexa and her teacher for a
moment. Though I couldn’t hear a word of
their exchange, Alexa smiled broadly and nodded cheerfully. He extended his hand to her and, clearly besotted, she readily placed her petite
palm inside of his. Gliding like a
debutante, the shirtless Prince Charming escorted my daughter down the diving
board where she, without hesitation, leapt right off the deep end and slipped
directly into the water.
On the drive home, I tried a light-hearted approach to
understanding what happened with my little swim-class Cinderella, teasing her
mildly about the new “boyfriend”—but this only earned me an “Oh, moth-ER!”
face and the silent treatment until I could buy back her affections with a
Happy Meal.
[Please tell me it
will always be this easy to make amends with my child?]
Other than the fact that I thought that I had another five
or so years to prepare for it, this scenario didn’t particularly surprise
me. I’ve puzzled and written a lot
recently about the rules of attraction and the nature of relationships—in my reaction
to the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon, I briefly mulled over the economy in
affairs of the heart, analyzing what it is that we are willing to barter in
exchange for what we most desire. I
couldn’t help but examine what this young lifeguard represented to a girl of
such limited years that would entice her (so quickly!) to abandon her fears and
embrace the opportunity that all of her previous instructors had offered to
her? What mojo did this young man
possess? An awful fear gripped me
unexpectedly. Heaven help her—had my
poor child inherited her mother’s preternatural attraction to the…dramatic pause…“bad” boy?
[I will quickly concede my weakness, as a young girl, to being drawn—like a hungry kitten to a saucer of yummy, yummy milk—to any young
man within a five mile radius in possession of a tattoo, piercing, mullet,
cigarette-smoke infused leather jacket, or rusted-out rattletrap blaring heavy
metal at a level that more than alarmed my mother, but actually sent her into a
frantic search for the nearest curator of chastity belts. In fact, at sixteen sweet years old, I
actually fell for a guy who fit the aforementioned description down to the very
last detail; he even had a license plate that read “LOSER6” (I kid you not. If you lived in South-Central Illinois in the
early 90’s, I can almost guarantee you saw it or knew him. I’m
just going to issue a blanket apology now.
You’re all covered.)
One day I got the nerve to stop making out with him for about
five minutes to ask why he actually paid good money for personalized plates that
were so self-deprecating. His response,
leaning into me with his ethereal blue eyes fastened to mine, my brain blurred
by his heady mix of Marlboro, motor oil, and whatever cheap cologne he’d stolen
from the local Wal Mart?
“I’ve lost in love six times.
But something tells me that my luck has changed with you. Don’t ever make me change it to ‘LOSER7’,
okay?”
(You do realize that I
just died inside writing that, right? I mean, I threw up in my own mouth enough for
the both of us.)
The intelligent young woman in me was laughing her ass off—actually
screaming
at me for listening to this absurdity—but the hormonally driven teenager in me
with the boyfriend who looked like an even hotter Judd Nelson from “The
Breakfast Club”? Well…she was too busy
cooing “Oh, you poor baby. Here, let me love you and fix your
broken-hearted booboos…” to even hear
my ego trying to kick her idiotic ass.
(I know. I KNOW.)
Don’t judge me.
In my defense, just so you won’t lose all respect for me, you
should know that just because I was drawn
to them, doesn’t mean I ended up with
them. Sheesh. Give me a little credit, won’t you? My “real” relationships were with artists,
software engineers, attorneys, and IT consultants. I just had a tiny addiction for a little while—just an occasional taste kept the
jitters at bay. But I’ve totally kicked
the habit now, I swear. I’m clean and
sober, man.]
So…back to my precious girl and the question that would not
leave my head: did momma’s predilection for rebels without a clue jump into her
gene pool? I couldn’t get any answers
from Alexa, after all, she’s just a little girl. She doesn’t yet possess the ability to articulate
what it is that drives her to do anything, whether it’s shaving her
cat, locking her sister in the closet for an hour, or holding hands with a
strange boy to dive into nine feet of water that had her quaking in her swim
shoes only minutes earlier.
I hate pondering something and coming up without a
hypothesis of some kind, so I decided
to take a break from the navel-gazing and bust out the kindle to read my latest
purchase—the wildly popular new Gillian Flynn novel (Gone Girl) that belongs to a genre (crime-fiction) that I never [EVER]
read—just to blow off my fears that the sins of the mother would be visited
upon the genetic betrayal that was to be my child’s legacy: that she would be destined
to meet and love the wrong guy, over and over again.
Talk about irony—for the next twenty-four hours, I was
courted by the strange, exotic, charming, and horrifying couple, Amy and Nick
Dunne. (Picture above-average American sweethearts—I’ve personally cast Reese
Witherspoon and Ryan Gosling, but you’re graciously free to select your own
images, with my permission. You’re more than
welcome.) The thing is, Nick and Amy offer a
behind-closed-suburban-doors-peep-show that makes Ana and Christian Grey look about
as interesting as a pair of neutered housecats.
(And I’m not even referring to the sex, although there is some of that,
too. No offense to the Greys, but their
fifty shades of kink pale in comparison to the mind-fucking drama of the Dunnes.)
There is honestly so little that I can tell you about this
book that wouldn’t be too revealing or provocative—but I will limit myself to a
couple of simple statements: this is a brilliantly written he-said/ she-said transcription
of the proclivities and perversities of a perfectly normal American couple. Then
again, I suppose this depends upon your definition of “normal”; the truth is,
there is love and passion and anger and betrayal and murder—and there are often
moments in this book that will astound you and knock you to your knees with the
awareness that these two people are more
like you than you may ever comfortably admit. And that’s a pretty humbling—and frightening—thought
when you lie down next to the one you love tonight.
While I am definitely recommending this wickedly clever, agitating
novel to anyone and everyone, I’m more than aware that Gillian Flynn does not
need my help selling her book: it does this, splendidly, on its own. In fact, as I was writing this, I noted that
it was the #4 book on the Amazon* and #5 on the Times* best seller lists. (*Note—Dear God, for the sake of all that is
holy in prose, please let something that is actually well-written knock that
bloated Grey trifecta off of the top of the best seller lists before I lose all
faith in humanity’s ability to appreciate genuine literature. Please?)
I cannot tell you any more—I cannot pigeonhole this book into any
category: it is simply its own engaging, electrifying entity. (Honestly,
would you all just hurry up and read it so we can talk about it? Thanks.)
Unfortunately, in matters of human attraction, sometimes we don’t
make the choices that are the best for us—sometimes, the heart simply wants
what it wants. The real hero may be
standing in front of us with his bleeding heart in his hands, but we are too
busy supplicating at the foot of the hunk adjusting his balls and stubbing out
a cigarette to notice. Love is rarely
within our realm of control—even when we think
we have it all figured out for ourselves, we’re just bullshitting and making
this up as we go along. What or who we
fall in love with is not always a true reflection of who we are or what we
value. In fact, the surface of the person
we fall in love with might be nothing like what lies beneath the façade at all—Poe
warned us that everything we see or seem might just possibly be a dream within
a dream. Gone Girl is a fresh take on a very primitive fear—that despite our
hubris and our assertions to the contrary, none of us truly knows what is
lurking in the shadows of the human heart.
Perhaps we would all be wise to exercise a little more caution around
those murky places—lest we be sucked into that darkness ourselves. (I’m
telling you, this book will mess with your mind.)
As for my baby girl and her poolside prince? I’ll just chalk this one up to the classy-sweet
kindness of a stranger. The hopeless romantic in me hopes that one day—many, many
years from now—Alexa will find the kind of partner who would inspire her to
exile her fears and hold her hand as they dive into the deep end of life’s
adventures together.
However, the neurotic mother in me is far more powerful and
she is fully prepared to purchase iron window bars and stainless steel chastity
belts. Bad boys beware: I can also
locate a great deal on medieval castration tools. Nobody needs a Christian Grey or a Nick Dunne
for a son-in-law; consider yourselves warned.
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