Alligator Girl and the Princess

There are a lot of things in their daughters' growing years that fathers need to be a part of. And, if you're like me, you shake off all middle-aged desires to sit and watch baseball on television and you take them out to see the world around them because you know that America will always have baseball, but you won't always have little girls who look up to you and want you around (I teach middle school. I know what's coming—and it's not warm and fuzzy).

Both of my girls are still young, ages seven and four, so we are still at the beginning of that long string of days that, eventually, leads to me walking them down the aisle to give each over to her future husband. I'm glad we've got awhile and that there are lots of weekends between now and then.

While it seems an enormous task to raise two confident, capable and faithful Catholic women--women who would tell the Pope to leave Avignon and get back to Rome where he belongs like St. Catherine of Siena but also follow the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux—when viewed as a whole, the good news is that much of what's required day-to-day just involves being there.

I was there this past weekend for this:

Now, this is not my four-year-old holding the smaller of two alligators let loose in the swimming pool at her five-year-old friend's birthday party. Neither is this her grabbing hold of the tail of the larger of the two alligators:

(This same tail-grabbing child, by the way, would go on to spend most of the party snuggling and kissing this gator as if it were a medium-sized dog. I have pictures of that, too, but don't post identifiable images of children on the open internet).

In fact, having relegated my daughter to the wading end of the pool because of her not yet being able to swim proficiently, I was quite pleased that she wisely got out of the pool when one of the alligators was brought to her end of it. It's what sensible people do when they see a crocodilian of any size coming their way—they actively avoid it. 

She avoided it, that is, until I started taking pictures. Then she wanted to get into my pictures and figured that touching the alligator was the only way to do it and she even held it briefly.

She's braver than her dad and I don't think this is the kind of confident and capable that I was thinking about earlier in this post. Yes, if you can't tell from the picture, the snouts of these reptiles were taped shut and the handler was close by. But, this was the kind of experience that starts a dad to reaching for his pocket knife and calculating how many stomps of his foot it would take to kill a smallish alligator if need be—all the while revulsing at the sheer scaly, sliminess of it (when you're a dad, you are chief killer of pests and dangerous animals, and handler of dead varmints. You just have to swallow hard and do it).

Of course, there were other animals that inspire primordial fear at the party, as well, chief among them the big banana python. In case you're wondering what the snuggle factor on that is, check out this picture. Fortunately, I didn't take a picture of that and my daughter stayed pretty close to the back of the gathering with me during its appearance.

Contrast this with my weekend with my seven-year-old whom I took to her first father-daughter dance. We had signed up for this when it was originally scheduled to be a Valentine's Dance but got postponed because of a low response to an Easter season event. In the end, the dance drew six daughters and dads and, while you might think that a low number, was about perfect in that each girl got lots of individual attention from the hostess.

After all had been introduced and each girl received some sparkles for her hair and face, there was some age-appropriate crafting of bracelets and necklaces; a lesson in swing dancing; a rose presentation ceremony; an opportunity for dads to write letters to their daughters and girls to make cards for their dads; a manifesto for dads to read on how important dads are to their daughters development; cupcakes and lemonade; and a fashion show/review in which the girls played dress-up and came out and performed for their dads.

My older daughter has developed two laudable skills: how to strike a pose for the camera and how to perform in public. She no sooner saw the microphone than she was singing a song of her own creation about how great fathers are. She met with a very receptive audience. She then became the MC of the show and started showcasing the talents of the other girls.

Then the hostess brought out the boa constrictors...no, not this time. This was classic father/daughter time. But, I don't doubt my seven-year-old princess would grab an alligator by the tail if, for whatever reason in the modern world, she needed to. Or, for that matter, tell the Pope to go back to Rome.