Artist's Daughter, The: A Memoir (4 page)

A
ccepting that the world and the people in it needed God was not difficult. Rejection and abandonment were real. It was the idea of absolute truth that was new. One truth. One God. One Savior. It went smack up against the messages of “what’s right for one person may not be right for another” that I’d grown up with. And the rules for living that seemed to go with the Christian faith were confusing. They felt constraining. At the same time, they felt safe. They offered some boundaries that simplified life. It made sense that if you reduced the complication, you reduced the potential for more pain and confusion.

The emphasis my Young Life leaders placed on marriage was part of this new framework. It was a new twist on romance. On commitment. I couldn’t remember my mother once mentioning marriage as something to hope for. In fact, she had a small placard propped up in our kitchen window that read, “Don’t wait for your knight in shining armor; you might get left cleaning up after the horse.” A cartoon of a woman dressed in a medieval peasant’s dress, standing behind a horse with her shovel ready, stood under the words. I knew my mom had placed it there for both our sakes.

Despite that placard and my mother’s efforts to minimize the importance of a man, I had an increased awareness of wanting something that a boy could give. I wanted to be loved. And boys offered affection, at least. Despite my tendency to be overly serious, I was a pretty girl, so I didn’t have a hard time getting boys’ attention. But I was also a rule follower, so many quickly lost interest when they realized I wasn’t going to be part of the fun that teenage boys hope for.

Boys were a mystery to me. After my grandfather died when I was six, my entire extended family was girls. Me, my mom, her sister, and her daughter, my only cousin. I wanted to figure boys out, and flirting drew them in. Too many times I played with boys’ emotions as I worked to get their interest. Today I’m grateful I don’t have sons so I don’t have to watch them be tortured by girls like me. I wasn’t malicious or even intentional; I was just too wrapped up in my own need for affection to think about what my flirting might do to the boys around me. I wanted to know if I could capture their attentions. And once I did, the challenge was over and I moved on. I wanted male love—and I wanted some control.

The few couples I knew with long marriages—parents of friends from school—didn’t appear unhappy, and yet there was something about marriage that made my mother answer the same way she did about God: “It’s not for me.”

In 1980,
Newsweek
magazine published a cover article that said college-educated women in their forties who had never been married were more likely to be killed by terrorists than to marry. My mother frequently talked about that with her sister and her friends. Usually with a joking tone, but as a way to say, “My chances are over.”

One day, standing in our kitchen, I asked her, “Do you think there’s one right person for everyone?”

“No.” The answer I was expecting, but not hoping for. “There are lots of possibilities; you just have to make one work,” she continued.

“But what about you? Do you think there’s one right person for
you
?”

She chuckled and looked at me like she appreciated my naïveté. “Not according to
Newsweek
.”

“But maybe you just haven’t found each other yet.”

I didn’t want her to give up on love, because I still wanted a chance at it. The romance of one person committing himself to me forever was too enticing. At fifteen, I wasn’t ready to give up. I wasn’t ready to pick up the shovel and stand behind the horse. I still wanted to dream of the happily ever after, even if it was naïve. I didn’t really think through what that would look like on a practical level once I was swept off my feet. That the happily ever after might be more centered on dishes and diapers than I realized. I wanted to focus on the romance.

Soon after that conversation, a man named Larry came on a rainy Friday night to pick my mother up for a blind date. A counselor from my mother’s school had set them up. He ducked to fit through the doorway of our 1920s bungalow, and as I looked up at him, I thought of a tall evergreen tree. His trench coat accentuated his height and was dark on the shoulders where the rain had grazed him. He was a recent widower looking for companionship, and none of us knew as we shook hands that he’d come to prove
Newsweek
wrong.

A year later, my mother walked into my bedroom, where the violets on my wallpaper climbed from the hardwood floors to the ceiling. My comforter with its matching violet pattern was pulled up to my chin while I shivered underneath. The nighttime drafts in our house were a combination of old windows and our frugal lifestyle. The lace trim on my comforter was a better match for the twelve-year-old who had picked it out. I was now sixteen and felt like the room could use a makeover.

She tried to wriggle as much of her body as she could next to mine on my twin-sized bed as the tears welled up in her eyes. She and I were both surprised that Larry proposed that night. It had been a typical evening for us, a three-person date. We were in the lobby of the Edgewater Hotel on Seattle’s waterfront. They were sitting on a sofa close to the fireplace, drinking their cocktails from the hotel bar. I sat a few sofas away, trying to stay up on my English homework.

I looked over my book and saw him down on one knee. I quickly lifted the book back up to cover my face.
What is he thinking? Here? Now?
I peered back over the top of my book. They were both turned, looking at me. The book went up again. I didn’t want to have to respond to what I knew was happening. I didn’t want a heavy conversation. I just wanted the night to go on like I expected, with hot chocolate, some pleasant ambiance, in a stylish hotel lobby.

“Things are going to change now,” she said as she snuggled up to me.

I nodded. I was afraid if I tried to speak, my tears would start. I was happy for the change so she wouldn’t be alone, but I knew our special twosome would never be the same. It was a bittersweet good-bye to our exclusive era, a girls’ life of adventure. At the same time, it was what I wanted. I knew more love would come out of it.

“Are you okay with this?” she asked.

I nodded again, my vision blurring as the tears filled my eyes. I looked down at the field of violets covering me. And really, I was okay with it. The fact that Larry wanted to marry her was proof of how good he was. He wanted to do the right thing. And I liked him. He took us out to dinner and always included me in conversation. I didn’t feel like he was just putting up with me.

And I agreed, things would change. Even though he’d been with us almost every evening the last few months, he still went home every night to his own house. We hadn’t lived with a man since the one I’d called Daddy left more than ten years earlier.

“We’ve had a great time together.”

I nodded again. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid my crying would intensify, and I didn’t want her to think I didn’t like the idea of her getting married. I just knew I was saying good-bye to the “us” of the past. I left my chin down on my chest so my tears could move down my cheeks more easily.

I was looking for evidence of good men in the world. Of committed men who wouldn’t leave. Who wouldn’t leave me. He wanted to do it right. How could I not be okay with that? Besides, I was looking at colleges, getting ready to leave home, and now she wouldn’t be alone. She and I both knew change was ahead anyway. I was ready to move out of the violet-lined room.

They married that summer as I got ready for my senior year of high school.

S
pring came, and like any senior about to graduate, I was excited and terrified. It felt as though middle and high school were all aimed at preparing for what was next: college. All those years working to have a “well-rounded” application, getting into the right schools, and ultimately earning scholarships so I could afford to go. I researched schools, toured them, and narrowed them down to five possibilities. My applications were all in. I was now waiting for my fate through acceptance letters and financial aid packages.

I earned my first 4.0 grade point average my first semester of high school. The affirmation was addictive, and I determined to graduate with no less. Academic perfection seemed like a worthy goal. And I rounded out my college application with class president, cheerleader, and city orchestra. I added tennis team to the résumé, even though I hated going to practice and competing. I probably hated tennis because I was terrible and didn’t do things I couldn’t master. But I needed a sport in order to waive my PE requirements, allowing me to not jeopardize my flawless grade point average with a gym class.

Striving for the perfect college application offered a road map for what to do during my teenage years. What classes to take, after-school activities to participate in, friends to have. If this was the formula for excellence, I was going to follow it and master it. I was going to will myself to be the best. If that meant starting my weekend homework on Friday night, staying up until midnight, and studying during my lunch hour, I would. It could earn me that scholarship, that ticket to the next place, but more, it could justify that I was indeed worth noticing.

Fifteen years later, I sat in my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group in Denver, listening to a speaker talk about healthy sexual development in kids. I was nervous about the presentation because as the group’s coordinator, I’d arranged for the speaker, and I wasn’t sure if she would address that controversial list of rules for right living and offend the women who were my friends. Would the topic even feel relevant, considering how young our kids were? I mean, really, how much was there to say about preschoolers and sexual development? But Mary came highly recommended and was free, so I booked her.

I could tell right away she was connecting with the group. She covered sexual abuse, how to talk to three-year-olds about their bodies, and appropriate touch. She told stories of her own abuse and how it impacted her marriage.

My friend Jen raised her hand and asked, “What about being naked in front of your kids?”

“I never saw my parents naked, and my kids see me get in and out of the shower.”

I sat in the front row, pleased as moms interrupted Mary with their questions. They weren’t offended; they couldn’t get enough. She was talking about the influence of same-sex and opposite-sex parents on their kids, and how the absence of one parent could
impact a child’s development. Then Mary said something that felt like a bullhorn in my face.

“If a girl’s father is absent”—the hairs on the back of my neck started to stand in anticipation of what she was about to say—“she tends to fall into one of two categories. She becomes either sexually promiscuous, trying to get men’s attention and affection, or a perfectionist, trying to prove she is worthy of love.”

There it was—
clunk
. The mirror had been lifted and the reflection was clear: a perfectionist trying to prove she was worthy of love. In an instant, memories of academic anxiety, of falling short in the tangible measuring sticks of high school life, came flooding to mind. I had a new clarity about what pushed my teenage self to be so good at everything all the time.

The spring of my senior year of high school, I attended a Christian leadership conference for students in Olympia, the state’s capital. The overhead lighting was stark, and even though there were no windows, I knew it was raining outside. I was clearly one of the youngest in the conference’s hotel ballroom. I sat in my chair holding my notebook and pen, waiting. I opened the notebook. Closed it. Opened it again and hoped I looked busy. The other students played similar games, opening their Bibles and pretending to read, shuffling through their bags, looking for something, anything, as long as it looked like they were comfortable sitting alone.

The conference speaker was introduced as an NFL player. Though I’d never watched an entire professional football game, his name sounded familiar. As he climbed the steps to the stage, his broad frame and chiseled jaw confirmed his career. He quickly started into his story of coming to faith, but what stood out to me was his story of finding love, tangible love, in his wife. They met in college. He was a bad boy, and she convinced him to be
different. They saved themselves for marriage so they could prove their self-control to each other. A commitment to show they weren’t in it for the immediate gratification but for a lifetime relationship.

I could feel my heart melting into a buttery mess on the hotel carpet underneath me. To have someone that strong say, “I will wait for you, I will take care of you”—that’s what I wanted. I knew it went against the “you don’t need a man to be happy” principle my mother worked so hard to instill. But I wanted it anyway.

I mastered the high school formula for success; it was pretty clear I was going to make it to graduation with my 4.0 intact and a valedictorian title. By my schooling standards, I measured up at perfect. But my heartache persisted. Maybe what I needed was a formula for love. And God felt too distant, too intangible. The key must be finding the right man. One who chose to live by the rules and to stick it out. Someone who proved trustworthy on the front end so there wouldn’t be risk of regret later. The result would be someone—a man, a husband—who would not leave. Who instead would wrap his arms around me, protect me, and never let go.