Date with one of my girls

I had a date with Mattie yesterday.  I thought about taking her to see Ice Age 4, but Christine reminded me that loud noises and Mattie do not mix (thunder freaks her out). So, we rode the light rail uptown to Imaginon for the Amazing Castle exhibit.

We played on a typewriter outside the libary (the "R" that is missing is intentional, as that is how Mattie says library),

posed on a pencil,

and cleaned out some earwax.

We visited a castle from the middle ages – cooking bread and meat and vegetables,

  tending the garden, waking up a dragon, and putting on a puppet show. 



While we were in the kitchen, Mattie said, “daddy, you’re the king, and I’m the princess.  You sit down and I’ll fix your meal.”  What I heard was, “daddy – you’re the man of the house, and I’ll fix you your meal”.  Whether or not she was saying this, this is what I heard.  I was heartbroken.  I don't think we have set up some system at our house where I sit down and await my wife to feed me – “the king of my castle”.  So you know, I immediately told her to sit down, and I would be cooking the meal and serving her. 

Afterwards, we went to McDonald’s (Old McDonald’s as it’s called around here, even by our 7 year old West).  We had a great time, having urnge draynk (this is a common saying around PRBC youth; it’s urnge draynk, not orange drink), chicken nuggets, fries, and apples.  I have my own concerns with how McDonald’s functions as a business, which I won’t detail here, but we go here on an infrequent basis.  Mattie’s first choice was Chick-Fil-A (Chick-o-lay as it was called for many years around here).  Christine and I haven’t discussed what it means for our family that Dan Cathy’s proclaimed that his company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit”.  I was grateful that Mattie said, “I’m scared that the cow will come, so I don’t want to go”.  We will have the conversation with our kids if we decide not to support Chick-o-lay , but the first conversation on this doesn’t happen in the car, headed to lunch, when I haven’t chatted with my spouse about how we’ll handle this.

Mattie wanted a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone for dessert.  Unfortunately, their ice cream machine was broken.  Every option that the woman gave to Mattie for dessert was met with a pout.  When, finally, we hit on a strawberry and banana smoothie.  To my surprise, she gave it to us for free.  I’m grateful to her for her generosity.  We tried to return the Transformer figurine from my… I mean, her Happy Meal, knowing that we didn’t need another something that would just end up in the landfill.  I was disappointed that this same woman insisted on giving her a more feminine toy.

After lunch, we headed to get our nails done.  Mattie chose the colors.  I now wish I had gone for the flower additions - they look so pretty on Mattie's nails.



my hand is the larger one

  

The ladies working there didn’t know what I would do about work with my painted toenails and fingernails.  I tried to explain about the idea of Sabbatical and that I didn’t have to worry about it.  I tried also to explain that I was in a job where it would be OK that I had painted nails.  Why is it that all jobs around here wouldn’t be OK with a man having his fingernails painted – because he wanted to or because he had a date with his daughter?

We were headed home, and as I dropped off Mattie at the bus stop to meet Christine so that they could meet West, I could feel the strange looks from the adults and even some of the kids about my painted nails.  "Only girls are supposed to paint their fingernails" I heard later from a neighborhood child.  Let me be clear – I am perfectly comfortable with my painted nails. 

I’ve had the conversation with some of the boys on West’s baseball team about the colors pink and blue.  Pink is not a girl’s color, and blue is not a boy’s color.  I am happy to wear a pink bow tie or my pink shirt and am still certain I’m a boy.  I hope that our children will know that it’s OK for West to cook and clean and play with dolls and do all those things that our society has defined as feminine.  I hope that our children know that Mattie and Marian can play with trucks and go play tackle football with the boys (to be clear, she'd kick their tail) and burp and do all those things that our culture have defines as masculine.

Me – I’ll continue to wear the shirts I like, no matter the color.  I’ll continue to get my nails painted when my daughter (OR SON) wants to paint them.  I have some work to do with the cooking, though.  May be beans and rice and hamburgers for a while.