I was maybe, truthfully, the tiniest bit afraid of the fact that we were having girl.
It's true.
You see, I know MYSELF and I just couldn't fathom having to try to say the right things TO myself. You see...I can be kind of...well...a weepy person and what was I going to do if there were TWO weepy persons in the house?
So I have been a bit afraid of this little, tiny, potentially weepy girl. I'm not referring to the crying that is COMMUNICATION in a small child. I am talking about the weepy-ness that can be ME.
But that was NOTHING compared to my fear of the DRAMA that can often be OTHER girls.
So I thought about it. A lot.
In fifth grade, I was prank-called by a girl pretending to be boy in my class. Being the heart-on-sleeve person that I am, and due to the fact that puberty had not set in for any of us, it was easy for me to confess to the "boy" that I liked him. Humiliation set in the next day at school.
In the sixth grade, I got kicked out of the cool-girl-trio we had because I was the new-comer (my mother assured me that this was no problem because the other two girls had decided to call themselves "Blonde Bimbos" and this was simply not something I wanted to be associated with anyway---thank heaven for wise mothers.)
Then I was ostracized again in the eighth grade because I was nice to the "nerdy" girl.
I personally think not having sisters made me particularly sensitive to these moments because I wasn't well versed in defending myself against this brand of attack.
And as I recall, that's about the time I started keeping my distance from the females of the species.
To survive---and to thrive I might add---in highschool, I found a handful of girls with whom I could discuss openly my two favorite subjects: boys, and the religious and philosophical implications of the world as I knew it---and ignored the rest of the backstabbing lot.
However, with age, maturity, and experience, the fear of girls was, I thought, gone. Until I realized I had to raise one.
Crap.
But I started to watch the girls around me. I've always loved the girls from the generations one or two before mine. They're good listeners and have good advice. My soul thrives on the conversation of the girls my own age at work, from the mission, and old college friends. We laugh hysterically as we tell stories of just plain-old-life. I adore the little girls in my class whose hearts are so pure as they are just being introduced making tough decisions about how to treat other people. And holy cow, who doesn't laugh out loud when they hear a toddler tell her dad that her mowf is pink because she's been eating "Fez" all day (she meant Pez of course.)
And then epiphany came. Last Thursday night, in fact. It was not GIRLS I ever had a problem with...it was just the teenage version of them. And by golly, this little girl of mine ISN'T GOING TO START OUT AS A TEENAGER!!!
And so I'm not afraid of her any more.
And as for the weepy-ness, me and my mom weep together all the time, and then hang up the phone, loving each other more than we did when the conversation began. It's perfect.
