This dress on her cost too much money. She wanted it so badly. I said no. She said through tears, "You know I am obsessed with cheese and clothes. And I am really obsessed with this dress." I so understand her obsession with cheese and then I lose her entirely on the fashion front in a way, I am sure, that confuses her; thankfully, she has an aunt for her clothes' obsession. May we all have an aunt for those parts of ourselves where our mothers fail us. Amen.
We left the store. She didn't get it. We then passed the store again -- my fault -- and it all started again. After the second round of whining and crying aloud, she wept silently all the way back to the car. At the car, I realized my husband wasn't with us. I buckled the kids in, said goodbye to friends, and got in the seat when he popped up with... a bag from the store with the dress that cost too much money and that we weren't going to buy.
It was the classic "What You're Not Supposed To Do As Parents." But, you see, we are all, many times, reliving our own unresolved moments through our children. Because of this, we do the thing we are not supposed to do. No matter how evolved we've become, that shit just pops right on up again.
When my husband was 7 years old, his family went to Spain for a few weeks. All throughout Spain, he wanted a kid's bullfighter's costume. Those costumes hung on the walls in all of the shops his mother was looking in and it was it for him. He did the whole song and dance that every kid does when they want something -- the same our daughter did for this dress. He didn't get that costume for any number of valid reasons (they had 9 kids traveling in Spain, they were expensive outfits, what does one do outside of Spain with a bullfighter's costume?, etc.).
When he put the dress on our daughter in the car, right on over the clothes she had on, she beamed. He did, too. He knew, of course, that he broke every co-parenting rule in the book: stay as a team, present a united front. I didn't care about any of those anymore, though.
He looked a little sheepish as he got in the car. "I had to.... It's vacation.... And I want her to know that dreams come true...."
He was really stretching here.
"It was the bullfighter's costume feeling all over again, wasn't it?" I asked.
"Oh man. It totally was."
"Can we say that that one is resolved for you now?"
We laughed. When I see parents who push their kids in sports not because their kids want it but because they want it -- usually because they either had it and want to relive it or because they didn't have it and wanted it so badly that they want their kid to have what they didn't have -- I laugh at the patheticness of it all, knowing full well that while sports isn't my thing, something else is, I'm sure.
For my husband, it all lined right on up to trigger his psyche: on vacation, an outfit desired, a desire going unfulfilled. This time he had the ability to make what he wanted to happen so long ago happen for our little girl.
And here she is. Pleased as punch. We've had to wash it night after night so that she can wear it again and again, and we will have to do that so many times over the next few weeks.
If she learned that dreams come true (puh-lease), that no doesn't always mean no, that people change their minds, that miracles happen, that moms can be vetoed, I'm fine with all of that. And whatever else she got can be resolved once she grows up and if she chooses to have children of her own. I hope it only costs her $64.