Walking With My Daughter

Okay:

It doesn't get any cuter than my daughter. I did really good with this one. Unfortunately, her mother decided to disappear a little over a year ago. (I know, sounds like a premise for a campy eighties sit com, right?) So now it's just me, her and her grandparents. The three of us together cover all the bases. She's not wanting for anything, especially attention.

Because most DC public schools are undefunded and, subsequently, underperforming, I have my daughter at a school across town in my mother's neighborhood. And, yes, her friends have names like Hannah and Emma. Knowing how impressionable 6-year-old little girls are, her grandfather and I go to great lengths to make sure she remembers that she is black. "You're black," we say. "And don't you forget it."

Then she says, "Well, actually, I'm brown. If I were black, that would be wierd."

Well.

Yesterday, we walked from my mother's house to the bookstore up the street. We rarely go for walks when we're at my house because the only thing walking distance from me is a mimi-mall with a 7-Eleven, a liquor store, a barber shop, two Chinese carry-outs and a Dominos. We've walked there before but she's a little scared of the homeless burn victims.

As usual she starts talking almost immediately and won't stop. I'm not listening to much of what she's saying and I'm hoping its of no consequence. The bookstore is huge, and the children's section has chairs where you can sit as long as you'd like and read to your child. The white people here take reading to their children very seriously and the clerk, who looks a lot like Brandon Frasier in Airheads, has an extensive knowledge of reading levels and Lexile scores. Not being able to imagine exactly why a grown man dressed in black with a greasy ponytail and arm tattoos would want to work in the children's section of a book store, I assume he is a pedophile.

We buy her a book and I grab a cappuchino and a City Paper from the adjacent gourmet coffee bar, then we make our way to the playground across the street. We walk past the Yoga studio, the market with the fresh produce in bins on the sidewalk, the pizza shop with the white men in Duckhead khaki shorts playing ping pong out front, the sushi bar, the bank and the fire station until we get to the playground.

There are lots of white people out here with their white children, some with their adopted multi-colored children, all enjoying the weather and looking generally pleased with themselves. I have a seat on a bench and tell my daughter to go for it, but as I feared, that won't be good enough. She wants me to participate in this jungle gym business. She wants me to hold her legs while she makes her way across the monkey bars. She wants me to watch her slide down the sliding board. She wants me to run across the bridge with her. "Daddy's an old man!" I shout. "I'm not up for all that."

Before I can finish my sentence, she walks off. Only she's not upset, she's kind of amused. And I notice for the first time that she may have inherited my sadistic sense of humor. She thinks its funny to watch me get worked up and then walk off, leaving me to sit there talking to myself like a crotchety old fool.

I also notice that the overweight middle aged white women are doing a far better job of keeping up with their first graders. I'm giving serious thought to catching a cab back to my mother's house and these women look like they could run a marathon. Then it hit me. The're all housewives. These women don't work. Their children are their lives. Of course they're full of energy. Of course they're emotionally available to entertain, nurture and educate 24 hours a day.

This epiphany brings me great sorrow. I start wondering how bad I may be screwing up my daughter. Tonight we will go home, order a pizza and watch The Last Dragon. I will fall asleep half-way through and she will wake me up at the end, "Wake up, daddy! He's glowing! He's got the Glow!"

Then I think, maybe my daughter is privileged. Those white kids and multi-colored adopted kids learn a lot about how life should be. My kid is learning about the real world. She's learning about disappointment, apathy and boredom. When she grows up, she'll be ready for anything. Hannah and Emma are in for a rude awakening.