Fifth grade was the first year I became keenly aware of my awkwardness. I remember my feet growing faster than the rest of my body, going days without brushing my teeth if my parents didn't realize it, and being semi-disgusted and semi-intrigued with my cubbie-mate's fascination with spitballs. I hated it when they landed on me, yet I hated it more when he directed them at other girls.
Fifth grade was the year that I became aware of the heightened sexuality of my teacher, Mrs. Ford. She wore t-shirts that were so tight, her nipples poked through. She taught class in three inch high heels, and wore night-time makeup during the day. She would often have us grade each other's papers and she would give one student a note to run to Mr. Marshall, the teacher next door. They passed notes frequently throughout the day. When one teacher was absent, so was the other.
Fifth grade was the year I returned a little roughed-up after a summer on the big island of Hawaii with my mother. My father, whom had custody of me and my brother, was dating his girlfriend of three months when they announced to us that she was pregnant and moving in. My brother and I painfully stayed with a family member while they went on a little adults-only trip together, and came back married. Fifth grade was also the year my sweet sister was born.
Its amazing how the memories that shape us are so three-dimensional. There's beauty sprinkled in with the pain. Nothing is ever all good. And, nothing is ever all bad.
The week after my children got home from their summer adventures, my fifth-grade daughter was overheard talking about her recent experiences. She kissed a girl playing truth-or-dare, and took up the habit of dumpster diving. The suitcase she brought home was riddled with used canisters, cracked vases, and half-broken picture frames. Not long after she arrived home, I was informed that she snuck off into the woods with one of the boys from her class, and they kissed. When I asked her about it, I said..."How did you kiss? Like this..." and I pecked her on the lips. She looked at me completely puzzled. "Is there another way to kiss, mom?" she asked.
I recall how I made the awful mothering mistake once of giving my daughter the birds-and-bees talk as if her future partner was going to be a male. I said, "One day...you're going to want to kiss a boy. You might want to touch him, or to look at his...privates..." When I was later telling my friend about this (you know they're a real friend by how impolite they are willing to be with their straight-up feedback), her response was...
"Really. Really? You really fuckin' told her that?"
I looked at her completely puzzled. After all, I thought I was killing it on the cool mom scene. She continued, "What if she doesn't want to look at penises? What if she likes vaginas? You just conveyed bias on the subject, letting her know that she is only safe around you in the context of a heterosexual relationship..."
Wow. Bam. Just like that, I'd been hit. Gravity. My friend was completely right.
She went on..."What you should've said is that one day, you're going to get curious. You might want to explore, to touch your body...and you might want to touch someone else's and to have them touch you. And it's okay...it's normal to be curious. It's normal to explore. As long as you decide what you're comfortable with and what you want to explore, nothing is wrong..."
My daughter is so much like her father. The good parts. The self-confident parts. The parts of him that I fell in love with that were enough to sustain me so that I could overlook all of those other things that caused me great pain. When I see that same fiery spirit well up in her, I think to myself...there he is. Somewhere between the dumpster trips and truth or dare games, I see that same curious glimmer of the eye. I recognize that that fire, that adventurousness...that risk.
I love it that he lives inside of her, even if he is dead to me.
I have no idea what my daughter's fifth grade year will end up looking like. I see some of my same awkwardness in her, but maybe that's true of almost all fifth graders. On the other hand, she is far more sure of herself and experimental that I remember being. We are still in the first month of school, and already she has used birthday money she saved to get bangs cut into her hair, gone to school in cornrows, and is well on her way to earning her next belt in taekwondo. What I do know is that I'll continue to have those moments when I really see her. Moments when I honor her...all of her. Moments when I'm thankful that I've got a daughter who follows her feelings and desires enough to bring me trash out of a dumpster the way a cat instinctually brings you the rat they just killed.
And, somehow in doing so, somewhere in my seeing all the parts of her I like and don't like, yet love because they makeup her...I am able to honor her father from afar. They're nowhere near the same person, yet there's an undeniable thread woven into the fabric of her being.
She definitely got that dumpster thing from him.