Fairy Tales

So, my daughter, Isla, is in love.  Actually, she has been in love for a year now, but only in the past week or so have she and her sweetheart begun to spend time together in a way that would be considered "dating."  I have to be honest: I have had a lot of fun watching this little love story come to life.  Its evolution has been painfully slow, but now that it has begun to unfold, it is exquisitely sweet.

I had a conversation with a friend last week about love and romance.  This friend is a committed Christian, but she has been married twice herself.  Her first husband was not a believer and devastated her when he chose to divorce her; she is married now to a solid Christian man.

But what she said about romance surprised me:  She said she did not believe in love stories.  Those were her exact words.  She is in a position to counsel younger women, and one woman she mentors agonizes over finding a husband.  My friend points out one young man after another to this girl as prospects, but the girl doesn't find any of them interesting.  "Why don't you like this guy?" she asks, "He's very nice!"  But the girl is not attracted to any of these very nice guys, and my friend finds that frustrating.

Her attitude is that marriage is a choice;  we make a choice about who to marry, and we make daily choices to keep our marriage together:  to love, to honor, to be kind, to be sacrificial, etc.  Yep, can't argue with that.  But in her world, that adds up to not believing in love stories.

In that moment, I tried not to allow my mind to ponder what that meant about how she ended up married to her current husband, although a frightful scenario flashed through my mind.  Did she choose him like she might choose a slab of meat for a Sunday pot roast?  That seemed to be what she was advocating.  (Although I do think better of my friend than that; I'm sure that is not how she chose her current husband.)

Well, I do believe in love stories.  I love a good love story.  Not fictional ones, only real ones.  And Isla and Jack, so far, have been exactly that.

She met him last year when she was invited to be the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet for another studio.  This studio didn't have a dancer who could handle the role, and so she was honored with the invitation.  She showed up at the first rehearsal and met Jack, who would dance the role of Sugar Plum's Cavalier.

He asked her once at some point during the year (via text) if she believed in love at first sight.  She didn't know how to respond and asked me, "Mom, what do I say to that?"  I thought her quandary was a little funny, because the truth of the matter was that, at that early stage of their friendship, she could not admit to him how much she liked him upon first sight, and she only liked him more and more with every passing rehearsal.  It is as close to love at first sight as I have ever known!

You know that line, "You had me at 'hello'?"  Well, Jack very well may have had her at 'hello,' but I suspect he definitely had her after the first rehearsal when she took off her pointe shoe and revealed a bloody spot on her tights where her foot had been rubbed raw by the shoe.  He was upset and said with an uncanny blend of kind concern and irritation, "I told you to tell me if your feet were hurting!"  Wow.  Good start, kid.  I mean, really.  Did someone give this boy a manual on how to win girls?

But.  (Every love story has to have a 'But,' right?)   He is a solid four years older than she is, which is huge when you're 16.  So, while she had the strong impression he really liked her before the whole Nutcracker was done, he didn't initiate with her after that.  After that last performance she didn't have any more reason to be at his studio, and he didn't take that step of establishing a friendship with her outside of their role together in the ballet.

For me as her mom, Isla's crush on Jack was a boon.  Ever since Isla was 12 or so, boys have buzzed around her like flies.  I lived in constant dread of the next boy to come along who would begin texting her incessantly.  She would roll her eyes and say, "MOOOOMMMM!!!  (Fill in the blank) doesn't LIKE me!  We're just friends!"  Right.  "He's just going through something now and needs someone to talk to!"  Okay, sure.  "Mom!  You're impossible!"

But once she set her heart on Jack, no other boy stood a chance, and I could breathe a sigh of relief.  Between January and June, he would shoot her a text every once in a while, and they would have a brief conversation.  I wish I could have videotaped her reactions when a text from him would come through -- her joy was palpable, infectious, and hilarious all at once!  They would have a brief little exchange, and then she would wait, wait, wait, sometimes for weeks before he would text again.  It was a little odd, and I can only guess what was going on on his end of things -- maybe he thought she was too young for him, maybe there were other girls he was interested in.  One week in August they spent every afternoon together because he had a ballet intensive in our city with a three hour break in the afternoons.  Even after that week, however, Isla still wouldn't let herself believe he actually liked her.  (Which was totally baffling to me.  Of course he likes you, honey!  Are you waiting for him to rent a billboard?)   From her perspective, it was too much to hope for.

Eventually, maybe by September, they began to text more frequently, and a true friendship was established.  Even then, she didn't have any confidence he liked her, although as a middle-aged woman, I know that a straight boy has no other reason to text any girl that much.

Only now, late October, Jack finally told Isla that he did, indeed, like her, and she confessed to feelings for him as well.  Like...duh?  Hasn't this been obvious for a year now?  But isn't that what a love story is all about?  The waiting, the hoping, the uncertainty, the thrill of excitement when mutual love is finally revealed?

Okay...so, what's the point?  (Hell-LOOO?  This a love story.  Isn't that enough of a point?)

Well, I'm not sure what the point is, except that I do believe in love stories and I think they are a wonderful thing.  What a sad state of affairs if marriage were just about choosing an acceptable partner, and then stoically making it work from there.

Who created love stories?  God, our Father did, that's who.  And what does that say about Him?  I think He believes in love stories too.  Is that me re-creating God in my own image?  I don't think so.  (Besides, He created me in His image, remember?)  You can't read Song of Solomon and come to that conclusion.

My daughter, Beatriz, calls me everyday so we can pray together.  She asked me to pray with her every day for two things:  her weight and her future husband.  And every day she asks God for a love story.  (sigh)  Isn't that sweet?

Bea is a completely different person from Isla.  I say these two sisters define each other by being each other's opposites.  If you know Isla, you know Bea: just reverse everything you know about Isla, and you have Bea.

To start, Bea has some grit in her personality.  I do pray that God will answer her prayers and give her a love story; I trust that He will.  But her partnership will look quite different from Isla's.  The man who falls in love with Bea will have to either be milquetoast and let her run roughshod over him, or be kick-butt strong and give her a little what-for every once in a while.  I don't know if she could handle any what-for at this point, and I know she would despise a weak man who let her run over him.  Even though she and I are praying, she says she isn't ready for a relationship yet.  Maybe she is right.  (Or maybe she is afraid, bless her sweet baby heart.  But that's another post.)

Isla, on the other hand, is the quintessential Disney princess.  And I don't mean a modern Disney princess, like Mulan,  or Elsa and Anna from Frozen; I mean a classic princess like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty.  Isla loves to look pretty; she is soft and sweet, accommodating to a fault, fundamentally feminine.  And from what I've seen of Jack, he has a lot of the classic fairy tale hero qualities.  He is protective, always concerned that she eat enough, that her feet don't hurt, that she has water, that they aren't pushing too hard in rehearsals; he won't let her pay for anything or open her own car door.  He even walks with something of a swagger -- not what you might have expected from a ballet dancer, but there you have it.

Maybe that is why this pair has captured my heart.  They are just so fairy tale!

The funny thing about fairy tales though, and most love stories, is that they end right about here.  You wait breathlessly for two hours or 280 pages for the starry-eyed lovers to find each other, and then they do, and it's over.  The credits play, or you've reached the end of the book.  You don't get to see the rest of the story.  But in real life, the starry-eyed lovers finally finding each other is the beginning, not the end, right?

So maybe the fairy tale ends here and real life begins.  Real life will include testing the boy's spiritual mettle and moral convictions, at least.  As a red blooded 20-year-old boy, it will be tough to wait for  a 16-year-old girl.  Will he be willing to wait?  Tom is no fan of any boy who has an interest in Isla at this point, but especially one who is four years her senior!  All this talk of fairy tale heroes will in no way impress him.  He was a 20-year-old boy himself once and knows full well what dangerous creatures they are.  Dominic, Isla's protective older brother, is on the same page.  So we have some choppy waters ahead.

But I'm glad it began with a fairy tale, with a true love story.  My friend is wrong.  Love stories do exist, and they are glorious.

New Names

I have decided, for the purposes of this blog, to give my best people new names.  Except Tom.  He is one of my best people, but he does get to keep his unpretentious, simple, strong, masculine name, just because it's so common, and it suits him so perfectly.  My purpose in hiding the kids' names has always only to protect their privacy if anyone were ever to read the blog.  =P

So here are my (new) children!  In order of birth:

Dominic, or Dom
Beatriz, or Bea
Reed, and
Ivy

Aren't they nice names?!  Ivy has always been L in previous posts, Dominic has been D, Beatriz has been B and Reed, R.  Very awkward all around, so I'm ridiculously thrilled with this new plan.  (Ridiculous being the operative word...) 

And I will remain your faithful friend, All Bark. 

Unmoored, Retracted

I am not unmoored.  Just had to get that out there, in light of my previous post.

I thought about taking that post down.  It's so raw and unguarded -- too raw and unguarded.  I don't know why or how I ended up here in my blog as I vomited all that up all over the place.  It belonged in my quiet time journal more than here, didn't it?  And that is where stuff like that usually goes.

But I'm back to tell you that, of course, I am not unmoored;  I am not forgotten.  And God is here.

I did think about taking that post down, but in the end I have decided to leave it up precisely because I do love that I ended that day by asking that question:  Father, where are You?  I thought You would be here.

We all ask that question at some point, don't we?

My heart breaks for my poor little me that day, the sobbing child lost and alone and bewildered.  But when I find myself in that sad place and cry out to Him with an honest heart, He always appears out of nowhere to pick me up, nestle me close to His face and whisper gently in my ear, "I am here, baby.  You have no cause for sadness.  I am here."

And that's all I want.  I just want Him to be here, with me.  No matter where I am, as long as He is here, I'm okay.  None of my questions are answered, and I don't need them to be.  I only need Him.

Unmoored

Oh Father, I am so sad.  Actually, I am not even quite sad:  I am stunned.  I am bewildered and perplexed at my own uselessness.  And I wonder where You are.  This uselessness is beyond my worst imagining.  It's so awful and shocking to my system, I have to believe, Lord, that You are somehow in it.  I look ahead to my weekend and realize that with Tom and Dom going up north, with Ivy at rehearsals all weekend, I will -- again -- have absolutely nothing to do.

This has been my worst nightmare for years.  I have looked forward to this day for years with dread, yet in the midst of my concern over this very thing, I have believed You, Father, that You wouldn't let it happen.  I believed that You would bring me into something new as this day approached.  But You haven't.  You actually haven't.  In fact, You have allowed any lingering usefulness that may have assuaged the blow of this day to also be stripped away in a surprising, an unexpected, and even a rather unkind way.  I am stunned.

Where are You?  I have to believe You are here, in this somehow.  Somehow this is Your will, for Your good purpose.

The greatest fear of my life is uselessness, and it has been even since Dom and Bea were small.  Crazy, because at that time I had many, many years ahead of me of overwhelming usefulness;  why I had that fear back then I cannot imagine.  But now I stare into the chasm of black, inky, nothingness.  I am unmoored.  I am connected to nothing, to no work, to no person who needs me, and I don't know what to do with myself.

What am I to do, Father?

My dream, whenever I would have the time to myself to think and do it, was always to write.  And now I have the time to think, the time to compose actual sentences, but ... I am afraid.  Is it Your desire that I write, Father?  Half the Christian world wants to write.  Half the entire world would kill to be able to actually be able to make money penning the insipid meanderings of their own dark and murky minds.  What makes me think anything I could write would have any more value than that?

Nothing.  There is nothing I have to say worth anything at all.  I have never wanted to write my own thoughts, Father -- only Yours.  But that's what every other Christian woman imagines herself doing too.  I see them on Facebook.  LT, KH.  They depress me because I do not want to read their words, but I do want to write, just like they are.

But without writing, I don't even have a thought for what to do with myself.  No plan at all, except to become what S is, and P, L, M, all my aunts.  Nothing.  Just sit -- eat, poop and wait to die.  And keep up with the laundry.

I think of Wile E. Coyote dashing over a cliff into the air, and then falling hundreds of yards to the ground below, usually with a boulder following him down to finish the job after gravity has done its work.  But this is worse than that.  This is like running full speed through a door and finding -- not an open chasm beneath me where, with a rush of adrenalin, I dramatically fall to my death -- but rather the inky blackness of outer space, where I...float.  Where there is...nothing.  Alone and unattached; unmoored; unneeded and unimportant.  I am completely forgotten.

Where are You, Father?  I thought You would be here.