Welcome to another installment of “Dad, Interrupted.”
“Dad, Interrupted” is a weekly newsletter where I describe, in lighthearted, moderately embroidered stories, my family-man misadventures with my wife, my kids, my friends, my in-laws and assorted chuckleheads I bump into.
This week’s episode is about fathers and daughters. With my family in a frenzy these days planning for Clara’s upcoming wedding, I startled myself recently by thinking, “Whoa, I’m going to be the father of the bride.”
Which made me think of the 1950 film of the same name, with Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett and Elizabeth Taylor. That film’s a comedy, a very funny comedy in my opinion, but there’s no denying that when you are the father of the bride…. something, a very good something, is coming to an end.
Of course my daughter Clara, who is my only daughter, will still be my daughter and Jeanette’s daughter. And of course a wedding is a marker of something exciting and new being born.
So this upcoming wedding is a little bit bitter, and a little bit sweet. Bittersweet. But there’s also room for a little bit funny in this whole realm where dads confront the young men who romance their daughters. When Clara was little and I would read her stories at night, I wasn’t thinking some young interloping guy was going to plop down and squeeze between us on the couch, you know? Of course I knew, but in my male dinosaur brain I didn’t really know.
One of my first encounters with this sad truth was Clara’s high school prom, back in 2010 or so. It was a case of a dad behaving badly, for the reasons I just said. So this story is sort of my confession:
His name was Kevin, and on principle I didn’t like him. He was blonde, his mother had a hotsy-totsy media job, he was a senior, and he was taking my little princess, only a sophomore, to her high school prom. Didn’t this kid know any girls his own age? Or had they all spurned his advances — and if so, why?
My concerns fell on deaf ears.
“Because Clara is beautiful and sweet,” Jeanette said when I asked why this senior had put the touch on my daughter.
“Of course,” I said, “but we have to be vigilant. There’s something about this guy I don’t like.”
“You’ve never met him, honey.”
It was pointless. The mood in the house was against me. Jeanette had a dozen websites open, searching for the perfect shoe to complement Clara’s yellow prom dress. I’d said I’d be happy to polish any of Clara’s current shoes — a penny saved is a penny earned! — but my offer was waved off. So I wandered upstairs, where Clara and her entourage of girlfriends were tackling the Hair Question. That’s capital “H” and capital “Q.”
“Hi, ladies,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Dad,” Clara said, “which looks better — the hairdo with bangs or the one with the swirls?” They were looking at a website with many, many different hairstyles.
“I like your hair just the way it is, doll,” I said. “And this Kevin guy better like it, too.”
I was ignored. My point was not in her field of vision.
I decided to check on the yard. The neighbor had not tended her garden since the administration of Bush 41. You may think this would rankle me, but sometimes I liked it. My yard looks so good by comparison.
Jeanette arrived as I was yanking out a few dandelions.
“Clara is so excited!” she said. “This will be one of the best memories of her childhood.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But first I need to call the child predator hotline.”
She scoffed and went back inside.
The prom happened the next Friday, which unfortunately was my late night at work. The plan was that Kevin, whom I referred to as “this … Kevin,” would pick Clara up at our house and squire her by cab to the prom venue.
Since I would not be able to make it home in time to meet “this… Kevin,” I at least wanted him to feel my presence. So after I was done with the dandelions I headed to the living room for some rearranging. I perched my father’s FBI hat on the back of the couch, where Kevin couldn’t help but see it, and in the middle of the coffee table I put the framed letter from J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime head of the FBI, congratulating my father on my birth.
“Maybe Kevin is interested in the FBI,” I told Clara brightly.
I also tucked a small can of pepper spray — the one with the wide cone spray, not the narrow-stream version — into Clara’s new yellow purse ($35, Bloomingdale’s). I’d tell her about it the night before.
When I got home from work the next Friday, Jeanette filled me in on the prom-night events. At about 6:30, holding a pink rose, Kevin rang our bell. Had he raised his eyes, he would have seen several pairs of eyes scoping him out from an upstairs window. That was Clara’s entourage.
After three rings of the doorbell (“Three, not two,” Jeanette had told her), Clara opened the door wearing her new yellow dress (H&M, $150) and said hi. Kevin said hi to her and Jeanette, and handed Clara the flower. The three of them sat in the living room, eating Jeanette’s homemade cheese coins and chatting (“He’s very polite,” Jeanette told me later. “See?” I said, deciding to interpret this compliment as vindication.
In due course, Jeanette, who is the family photographer, asked Clara and her date to step into the garden so she could record the moment.
As they ambled toward the back door, Kevin stopped.
“There’s some sort of rumbling,” he said. “Also…squealing?”
“Oh, that’s just my brother upstairs,” Clara said quickly.
It was not Clara’s brother, who was at that moment at his friend Sam’s house getting a homemade shamrock tattoo. It was Clara’s herd of spying girlfriends, who were now scurrying to the back bedroom to watch the photo shoot. They had been eavesdropping on the living room conversation.
What happened next is why I love Jeanette.
In the back, Jeanette shepherded Clara and Kevin to the middle of the yard. It was June and the whole garden looked lush. The butterfly bush was full of its purple panicles, our bluestone patio had pots and pots of marigolds, the petunias were a blaze of color, and then there was my pride and joy, our New Dawn pink rosebush. It has since died, but back then it was the size of a fat grizzly bear cub.
Jeanette could have chosen any of these scenes for the prom pictures. But she decided to pose the two by my pride and joy, the New Dawn rosebush.
“Smile!” Jeanette said. The two looked a bit awkward, as teenage daters do, but who cares? They were young, and the late-afternoon sun was shining on Clara’s new hairdo (Medina Salon, $35).
Also, Jeanette is a photo pro, and she chatted Clara and Kevin up and talked about the prom and the food and the music until they both forgot they were posing.
She snapped boatloads of pictures while she chatted, because you never know when the perfect shot will present itself. Unfortunately, this snap-at-will approach has burdened all our electronic devices with thousands and thousands of photos, and, before the iPhone came along, it also required multiple photo storage cartons that now live under our bed, in our drawers, tucked into my tool closet and under our piano.
But this time I did not mind all the photo-snapping. Yes, some of the prom pictures of Clara and Kevin are blurry, some are half in shadow, and in some a wind-blown hunk of hair has photo-bombed someone’s face. And a few are quite good.
But there is one constant in all these many pictures, good or bad: Clara is holding Kevin’s sad, single, lonely pink rose, and, looming above and beside them, are scores of pink blooms on my New Dawn rosebush. Clara’s Dad’s rosebush.
I pored over the pictures when I returned from work that night. “Nice try, ‘Kevin,’” I said as I exulted over the photos. “Dad, a zillion roses, Kevin, a sad, measly, single, lonely one. Dad wins! A romp, a rout, a blowout!”
“Honey,” I said to Jeanette, who was nearby munching on some cheese coins, “did you pose them there for my benefit? There are other good spots you could have chosen.”
She smiled benignly and said nothing. So technically, I don’t know if she did this consciously on purpose. But do you know how they say that married people start to look like each other as the years go by? I think their minds start to merge together, too. So even if Jeanette didn’t do this consciously on purpose for me, she did do it for me.
Nice try, Kevin.
Why I Love My Wife