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“Come on! I just want to know!”
“Yes, he has a last name. It’s Larson. His name is Drew Larson.”
“Is he a good one?” she asked seriously.
I stared at my daughter, wondering where on earth she had learned to ask that. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d been worried about having to talk to her about, although I hadn’t realized it. It was a good question, but it was one I wasn’t sure how to answer.
I wanted him to be a good one. I knew that. I’d wanted that badly enough to break my cardinal rule about dating pilots before I had even known him at all. The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted that, but I still couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t sure how long you had to know a man to know if he was a good one or not. There was a part of me that thought that after the loss of Matt, I would never know if a man was a “good one” or not. It was certainly not the kind of question I felt up to answering on the fly, while my ten-year-old watched me with narrowed, skeptical eyes.
“He’s a pilot, so that means he’s not a loser,” I said. “So yes, I guess you could say he’s a good one.”
“No, Mama.” She rolled her eyes before looking at me like I was the most foolish woman on the planet. “That’s not what makes a boy a good one. It’s not the kind of job he has.”
“No?”
“Nope. Not the job.”
“What is it, then?” I asked.
“It’s about whether or not he wants to put a ring on it!”
My mouth dropped open, and Emma broke into a massive fit of giggles. She jumped up, our game momentarily forgotten, and broke into the whole Beyonce song and dance. It was another one of those things I’d never suspected she’d picked up on at such a young age, and the shock of the comment had startled me badly.
“Emma! Emma, sweetie, hold on. Stop that for a minute and sit down.”
“Okay, but just so you know, that song’s awesome,” she said, grinning.
“I’m not saying anything about the song, but it’s not always about putting a ring on it. You know that, right?”
“Sure, it is. Why else would you want to date a boy?”
“Are you going to be looking at every boy as a maybe husband when you’re allowed to start dating?” I asked.
“If I’m ever allowed to start dating,” she grumbled, sufficiently bummed out by how long it might be before she could date to sit back down like I’d asked her to.
“Fine, if you’re ever allowed. But are you?”
“No, not at the start. But that’s because I’ll be too young! You aren’t too young. You already had one husband, so I know you’re not too young.”
“You’re right. I’m not, but that’s not my point.”
“Then what is?” she asked.
“My point is that you don’t have to look at every guy you date as somebody that could be your husband someday. Sometimes, you date a guy just to date him, and you don’t think about maybe getting married at all.”
“That sounds like a waste of time to me.”
I laughed in exasperation because at that point, I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. No matter what I was telling her, Emma had me pegged perfectly. I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but I did look at every guy I dated as a potential husband and stepfather.
It wasn’t something I was going to come right out and say to Drew, of course. It was clear almost immediately that saying something like that was the perfect way to scare a guy like him off. But just because I didn’t say it and hadn’t planned on saying it to anyone for a long, long time didn’t mean the thoughts weren’t in my head. They were. Every guy I dated was a potential father for my daughter, and acknowledging it to myself was a sobering thought.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“For what, sweetie?” I answered distractedly, unable to get rid of the thought now that Emma had planted it there. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t know. You look stressed now or something. I don’t want to make you feel bad. I want to make you feel better. That’s the whole thing. I want you to be happy, okay?”
“That’s what I want for you, too.”
