Sometimes I feel like that matchmaker who’s on a double date with the couple I’m fixing up. I keep throwing interesting tidbits out there, trying to make my two friends look as wonderful to each other as possible.
Only in this case, the people I’m “fixing up” are my husband and 6-year-old Ladybug. I’m all “When your dad was in college, he stopped in the middle of the road one night and found four baby possums still clinging to their dead mother’s back. He ripped off his very own shirt to keep those babies warm and then, on top of that, he had no problem taking the ribbing he got when he told the guys back at the construction site what he’d done.”
As you know, the kid loves animals, so a dad who saves orphaned baby possums earns lots of cool points. Or when she’s in super-hero mode and thinking about all those bad guys out there, I’ll slip it into the conversation that her dad once worked at a Sheriff’s Office and walked handcuffed bad guys to their jail cells. She thinks that’s really fabulous. I’m still working on how to spice up his current position as newspaper editor. (“There was this one time he took out a COMMA that was in the wrong place. It was awesome.”)
What’s funny is he does the same thing.
“Mommy was once in a burning building wearing all that firefighter gear,” he told Ladybug once, forcing me to recount, in minute detail, the day, as a cop/courts/fire newspaper reporter, I’d been part of a controlled burn. It wasn’t necessary to tell her that I was in there for about five minutes before giving the firefighter next to me the frantic signal that I wanted OUT. That freaking mask made me claustrophobic. Or maybe the idea of getting singed did not appeal. My sweet husband is always dropping little tidbits about me: “Your mother used to ride a cow. I’m serious. The cow was named Rosie and she would sit on her back and read a book while she walked around eating grass. True story.”
The idea is, of course, to let Ladybug get to know her parents as people and to aid and abet parental bonding. When I tell her things about her dad, I want her to think he’s wonderful and have a sense of pride that he’s her father who loves her with all his heart.
And, honestly, we’re flirting. Just a little. You gotta multi-task sometimes.
