The Girls from Ames (33 page)

The girls share stories of how they’ve found new reasons to appreciate their own parents now that they’re adults. Angela tells about the day in 1979 when her dad came home and said he no longer would be working as the manager of the Gateway Center Hotel in Ames. (It would later become a Holiday Inn.) He couldn’t bring himself to say he’d been fired. He just said he planned to find another job. Angela knew he’d likely need to look beyond Ames, and so she began crying, telling him she couldn’t leave her friends, she just couldn’t! Years later, her dad told her that seeing her reaction that day, and realizing how much she loved and needed the other girls in her life, he made a decision. He’d limit his job search to Ames. It was a selfless act for Angela’s dad—limiting his own career because he had put his daughter’s happiness first.

Conversations about motherhood lead naturally into conversations about fatherhood, and their husbands’ strengths and deficiencies.

This Ames girls’ reunion is lasting almost four days. That means their husbands back home are looking after twenty children on their own. The girls think this might be beneficial for both their kids and their husbands—offering one-on-one time without motherly interference.

Diana, Jane, Angela and Sally—who between them have eight daughters and no sons—say they hope a little bit of confiding is going on between their daughters and husbands while they’re cocooned here at the reunion.

These are not easy times for fathers and daughters. As diligent dads try to bond with daughters born in the 1990s, many are struggling. Across America, Daddy’s little girl is growing up faster than ever—in a world of date-rape drugs and risqué clothing—and fathers often respond by ignoring danger signals or by retreating to a life focused on their sons. Even before daughters are born, many fathers feel conflicted. A 2003 Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of men would prefer having a son if they had only one child, compared with 19 percent who’d prefer a daughter—a ratio little changed since 1941. And once a girl arrives, her parents are 6 percent more likely to get divorced than if she was a boy, according to a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Rochester. Parents with three daughters are about 10 percent more likely to get divorced than parents of three sons. In homes with teenaged girls, the likelihood of divorce doubles. (The reason dads with sons are less apt to divorce: They may feel a greater need to stick around as a male role model. They’re also more comfortable around boys.)

At the same time, reams of research show that girls who are close to their dads are less likely to be promiscuous, develop eating disorders, drop out of school or commit suicide.

For the most part, the Ames girls say their husbands are pretty good at connecting with their daughters, though the men will sometimes say, “You’d better go talk to your mother about that.”

Like so many men, their husbands often feel most comfortable bonding through activities. “My husband and daughter play golf together,” says Sally. Walking eighteen holes, a dad and daughter can discover a lot about each other.

Because most of their husbands arrived in the girls’ lives after they left Ames, the men aren’t especially close to each other. They are friendly and cordial, and they enjoy each other’s company when they get together as a group. But they recognize that the relationships between the girls themselves are almost sacred. The men see no need to form close bonds with each other.

The girls say they completely appreciate that their husbands—every one of them, including Kelly’s ex—have been supportive of their get-togethers over the years. Their husbands don’t make them feel guilty about leaving the family for their reunions. “Go,” they say, “and have a good time. The kids and I will be here when you get back.”

 

 

L
ate one night during the reunion, Kelly is talking about her divorce, and Cathy, the only Ames girl who never married, throws a question out to the group: “Do you all feel as if you’ll be with your husbands forever?”

All the married girls say that yes, they’ll make it to the end.

And then Cathy asks, “Well, if you’re in this for forever and ever, how good do you expect it to be?”

From there, a decision is made. Just for fun, the girls are going to rate their husbands. They agree to go around the room one by one using the old reliable scale of one to ten. “Today, my marriage is a ten; I haven’t seen him yet,” one of the girls says jokingly. Another asks: “Are we rating the man or the marriage? Because that could be two different numbers.”

(To resist starting trouble in their marriages, the girls are reluctant to reveal all of their comments, and their husbands’ individual scores, for inclusion in this book.)

They decide they’ll rate the men on several factors, including “the quality of life he brings to my family,” “how he makes me feel about myself,” “how involved he is as a father,” “how attentive he is” and “how attractive I still find him.”

Kelly is divorced, of course, and Cathy is single, but the other eight all say that their husbands are decent men—good providers with strong work ethics, smart guys with lots of interests.

Some of the nonworking Ames girls say they appreciate that their husbands earn a good living, allowing them to stay home. That helped lift a husband’s score. Some of the working women say their husbands encourage their careers—another score-booster.

Someone comes up with a straightforward line of questioning they all can contemplate: When my husband gets home from work, how do I feel? Am I glad to see him? Am I neutral about it? Or do I think, “OK, now I have to deal with him and his issues”?

One of the girls says she actually gets a little excited when her husband walks in the door. A few others say they wish they had that feeling, but they don’t. “That’s the time of day when I’d like some downtime, and that’s when he wants to talk,” one says.

“I feel excited when I see my husband driving away,” someone says. (She’s kidding!)

Do any of their husbands get excited when they walk in the door?

“When we get home from this reunion, they’ll definitely be glad to see us,” one says. “That’s when they’ll be able to hand the kids back to us.”

Over the years, some of the girls have had slight, innocent flirtations with other men or at least have found other men attractive from a distance. They can talk about these sightings or interactions with each other far more easily than with their friends back home. If there’s a man they notice is handsome at Little League or at a PTA meeting, there’s no upside in mentioning it to a neighbor, who might know the man and his family. But here, in the confines of an Ames girls reunion, it’s easy to share this sort of thing. They’re still faithful to their husbands, but they’re more comfortable here revealing whatever they’ve been thinking.

Cathy asks if they can picture their husbands married to anyone else. Or could they see themselves married to any of the other Ames girls’ husbands? “I could picture myself having an affair with your husband,” one says jokingly about a husband the girls have repeatedly mentioned as being very attractive.

The girls acknowledge some issues in their marriages. One says she sometimes feels as if all she has in common with her husband is their shared devotion to their children.

And there are the full range of annoying habits to be discussed, which lower husbands’ scores slightly: “He puts his dirty clothes next to the hamper, not in it.” “He never washes fruits and vegetables.” “The day we’re having people over is the day he decides to clean the garage.” “I clean up the house and put stuff at the bottom of the staircase to go upstairs. Every time he goes up the stairs, he just walks by whatever I’ve put there.” “When I clear the table, I’ll take all the dishes to the sink. When he gets up, he takes only his dish.”

“When something is lost, I want to keep looking until I find it. I’ll look and I’ll look,” one of the girls says. “My husband gives up looking so early. That’s annoying to me.”

“He’s a good-looking bad looker,” someone responds.

Coming up with an exact score for each husband is an inexact science. “It’s hard to rate husbands, because a lot depends on the day,” one girl says. “Sometimes it’s a ten, and then the next day it’s a five.”

None of the eight married women give their husbands a rating lower than six. And when they add up all of their scores and divide by eight, the average score for their husbands is an 8.2. Not bad, they decide.

When they were girls in Ames, dreaming of storybook romances and marriages, would they have been happy with the idea of an 8.2 marriage?

Truth is, as girls, they couldn’t even fathom the full impact of being a wife and mother.

“I’ll take an 8.2,” one of the girls says. “I think that’s a sign of a happy household.”

 

 

A
s the reunion continues, Jenny is waiting for the opportune time to give everyone some special news. She hasn’t had any alcohol since she arrived, and no one notices. Then during one of their dinners, she gets the attention of everyone at the table and tells them her surprise: At age forty-four, she is a couple months pregnant. Her three-year-old son, Jack, will have a sibling.

Everyone is so thrilled for her. There are hugs and congratulations all around.

Jenny, overjoyed at this later-in-life chance to have a second child, admits to a memory dating back to the weekend she got married in Ames in 1996. A bunch of the Ames girls had come into town with their children, and they were planning to get together so all the kids could interact with each other. Jenny, of course, was too busy with wedding duties to join them. But a thought was in her head that day: “I sure wouldn’t be too interested in hanging out with a bunch of kids. I’m glad I don’t have to go to that gathering! Who wants to be with all those kids?”

Perceptions and feelings change, of course. “My favorite thing about my life is being Jack’s mom,” Jenny now says. “If I knew how wonderful it would be, I would have done it earlier.”

She thinks being an older mother has made her far more patient, less fearful about things like germs, more able to compartmentalize duties at home and on her job at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where she is assistant dean of public affairs. “I think I’m a better mom because I work. I am lucky to be able to feel a strong sense of accomplishment at the office, and it’s nice to have adult conversations there. I don’t feel like I should be at work when I’m at home, and that I should be at home when I am at work. When I’m home, I’m totally present.

“I’m proud of the work I do, I really am, though if I didn’t do it, somebody else could. But nobody can raise Jack the way I can. He’s my kid and I think I can raise him best.”

Jenny tells the others that longevity is in her genes, so she hopes she’ll be around for her kids for a long time. (After her grandmother died, her grandfather courted and then married his sister-in-law—Jenny’s grandmother’s sister. “We called her Aunt Grandma,” Jenny says. “Aunt Grandma lived to be 103. So I’m hoping to live long, too.”)

If all goes well with the pregnancy, Jenny will deliver a baby who will come of age in the 2020s. What issues will Jenny face as an older parent then? Will “cooperation and appreciation” still be the appropriate mantra? Will the other Ames girls all be grandmothers by then, giving short shrift to her emailed questions about raising teens?

The day after Jenny’s announcement of her pregnancy, the girls go into Angela’s backyard so photos can be taken of them all in a group with their hands on Jenny’s belly. The photos are meant to mirror those taken when they were in their late twenties, having their first children.

The girls will look older in these new photos, of course, but they’re infinitely wiser, too. “It’ll be so wonderful to have another new life in our lives,” Kelly says as she and the others take their positions in a half-moon around Jenny, literally enveloping her in their good wishes.

“A
ny news from Ames?”

Always, whenever the girls get to talking, someone will eventually ask that question. And of course, there is always news. Most of their parents are still in town, keeping them informed, sending them clippings from the
Ames Tribune,
sharing stories about births, marriages, divorces.

Sometimes, the news from home is just fluffy and amusing.

Here at the reunion, Karen offers a report about a certain woman she bumped into during a recent visit to see her parents in Ames. The woman looked stunning—her figure, her face—and Karen mentioned this when she saw Dr. Good, the dentist she used to work for. “She looked so cute!” Karen told Dr. Good. “I don’t remember her being so cute.” He responded: “For the right price, you can also be that cute. Even cuter.”

In her hometown near Philadelphia, Karen knows plenty of women who’ve had extensive plastic surgery. “At the gym, the ones with plastic surgery do sit-ups and their boobs point toward the ceiling. They jump up and down and nothing moves. Meanwhile the rest of us are wearing two bras.” On the East and West Coasts, bionic boobs are everywhere. But to think that women in Ames are lining up to have head-to-toe plastic surgery—well, that’s newsworthy.