House of Eratosthenes

I had a lot on my mind, because I was about to become a father. To a healthy baby girl. Her mother informed me, nearly two months previous, that I wasn’t going to work that morning because the water would break that day…which didn’t happen, and didn’t happen the day after that, and the day after that. That’s where the previous two months went. What a long two months those were. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, I won’t forget it.

I remember it like it was an hour ago: The sun just started to peak up over the mountains and I approached American River Canyon Dr. The thought in my head rings clear as a bell even today: “Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t know how to raise a girl, because the world doesn’t know either!” Seriously, what are they supposed to do? Marry? Have kids? Clean house? Bake pies? Every little thing you have them do, someone somewhere is ready to criticize you for it — and her too. Which means something. What is an expectant father to do?

The map says my route was 3.86 miles. I don’t remember too much of it after that; nothing at all, really. Not a single footstep. Thankfully, “Savannah” or “Mikhaila” or whatever-ya-call-her, was born 11 pounds, fourteen ounces, with extra equipment, that Wednesday afternoon. I was spared those interminable trips to the barbie doll shops and the Twilight movies, instead I get to be preoccupied with camping, archery, knot-tying and gunfire. Good. To this day I see it as The Lord’s infinite wisdom, confining a man’s temporal challenges to fit the finite talents he can bring. The same is true of all Freeberg men. We don’t have daughters, because we’re not up to it.

But I don’t think anyone else is, either.

And that ends my experience with being a father of a daughter. Just a hypothetical; several weeks of dull and thoughtless apprehension, followed by a few terrifying minutes of real clarity on a Sunday morning, once liberated of the anesthetizing distractions. Followed by a permanent terminus. Now it’s someone else’s problem. That makes it easy; had it actually happened, I would have eventually found a way to deal with it, just like I deal with it when my liquor store doesn’t stock my favorite beer in the cold case. That makes it easy, too. But, it’s a challenge I’ve not had to face down, since my Sunday-morning sweaty-hiking deep-thinking…at which time, I came up empty with all my man-against-nature fine-mind-against-whatever-challenges-the-world-has-to-offer ruminations. That makes it hard. Very, very hard; I’m not used to coming up empty, as in, all-out-of-ideas. In fifteen years, since then, I don’t think it’s really happened to me quite like that. On that Sunday morning, as the sun peeked over the mountains, I was fresh out of ideas as I’ve never been before or since.

Would I have, once again, found a way to deal? I’m certain the answer is yes. But honestly, I have no idea what that way would’ve been. I haven’t even a glimmer.

Take this however you will. As a salute to parents of girls? That probably works, and it probably fits. They have a special challenge. Maybe, had I been forced to adapt to it, I could’ve and would’ve. It’s more than likely. But the same could be said of serving in Iraq, maybe getting a limb blown off. Odds are, I’d have adapted to that too. But that’s all just a useless hypothetical. Here I sit with all four limbs, all twenty-one digits, and a wonderful, wise, capable, conscientious and scrupulous son. Who’s four hundred miles away, but oh well.

The point is, I can’t criticize the feminists too much. They are coping with the problem that, fifteen years ago, I had declared — and found — to be unsolvable. Then again, you could argue that through the thirty years previous, they had made it that way. But meanwhile, the plain and simple fact of the matter is there are still pregnancies going on, and some 52% of those end in the birth of a female baby. Then what happens? As she grows up, she acquires skills? Sounds good! Then what? She meets someone? And her life turns into something that is not a complete vegan-radical-fem-henna-Earth-goddess mess?

My son is coming over to visit this summer. Before the school year begins and he has to go back, we’ll have probably, oh, twenty or more conversations about my future daughter-in-law. Is he going to be an ambitious and capable manly-man, and introduce me to a lean, strong, capable young girl with straight teeth who will fortify my family line with strong, robust grandchildren, and maybe make the old man more than a litle bit jealous; or is he going to wimp out and bring home some cleb-foot freckle-faced inbred hillbilly girl with fifteen kids by four previous marriages and who knows how many informal couplings…

I reckon that’s politically incorrect, putting the same pressure on boys that’s been put on girls since the days of Shakespeare. What’re ya good for? Who ya bringing home?

Well — whatever. If you’re going to do something, do it right. That’s an easy rule to follow, until you apply it to the raising of a girl. Then things get complicated fast. And boys are not too much easier. I’m now over twenty years divorced, with a fifteen-year-old son. Yes, the math doesn’t add up. It’s the first question St. Peter will have for me, and whatever questions come after that will be nothing more than an afterthought. Well, it is what it is; I can only apologize so many times.

But that’s my complication. Women, nowadays, have their own. I had to put some serious thought into this, before sunrise on a Sunday morning in the summer of ’97. I’ve not had to think about it too much since then, but I have have the feeling I’ll need to be thinking about this, again, before too much longer.

This is a place where we differ, yet we’re the same. I don’t have any daughters but I have three wonderful sons, the youngest of which is only slightly older than your boy… he turned 15 in February… and that’s where we’re the same. Where we differ is I wanted a daughter in the worst possible way… a girl in the image of The Second Mrs. Pennington and myself.

I had no qualms at all about how to raise the girl, had she BEEN a girl, and I confess I wanted a girl-child mostly for selfish reasons. Boys grow to be men and if you’re lucky they become their own men. Yeah, they give ya grandchildren and you can smoke cigars, tell war stories, and drink beer with ’em… again, if you’re lucky. But daughters remain Daddy’s Little Girl, for ever and ever. I watched The Second Mrs. Pennington plop down in her father’s lap when she was in her mid-thirties and watched the Old Man’s face GLOW when she did that. I’ve also watched my 20-something granddaughters do the same sorts of things with SN2, and it’s a wonder to behold. THAT’S what I wanted… but, alas.

Pray for a daughter, Morgan. They’re harder to raise, true, but you get a lifetime of returns when they come out right.
- bpenni | 04/25/2012 @ 05:34
I think, at this point, my die is cast and my factory is closed. Like Frank Sinatra said about regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.
- mkfreeberg | 04/25/2012 @ 05:59
I admire your circumspection, but it makes it difficult to know if congratulations are in order for you. I hope mine are not misplaced.
- nightfly | 04/25/2012 @ 08:37
The congratulations are probably for the parents who were met with this “impossible” challenge and somehow grew into it. That’s the thing about parenting. It’s mostly successful, if you just take the time to attend to it, but always flawed.
- mkfreeberg | 04/25/2012 @ 08:43
I dunn’o, Morgan, fifteen seems rather young to start the “when you get married” talk. Maybe the “what to look for in a girlfriend” talk would be more appropriate and would lead right in to the former when that comes his way.

And I’m thinking a granddaughter would totally be in your wheelhouse. Can never have enough strong conservative women folk.
- tim | 04/25/2012 @ 09:52

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Feminism 6/1/97Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Feminism 6/1/97
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012