All grown up

It was the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1992 in a small rental house in Milledgeville, Ga. I had just crawled into bed after watching the New Year’s Day football games. Miami had defeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, and I was tired after a hard day of eating Doritos and manning the remote control from the couch.

Not long after I got under the covers, my wife Susan said, “Mark, I think something is happening.” I muttered something along the lines of “arrgehhhummfff” and went back to sleep.

Then she stood up and she said, “I’m serious. My water just broke.”

“It’s ok,” I mumbled, half-asleep. “I’ll get you another one.”

Then recognition crept in, and I realized what she meant. I jumped out of bed and ran around the house like Ricky Ricardo, getting everything ready to drive 40 miles to a Macon hospital for my wife to give birth to our first child.

We got to the hospital and, a mere 18 hours later, our new baby came into the world, a daughter we named Alice Susan and decided to call Allie. She came in screaming her head off, which was a sign of things to come.

I was accused by other members of the family, specifically my mother-in-law, of monopolizing my little girl in her first few days of life, not letting anybody else hold her. Most photographic evidence from the time supports this, as she seems to be in my arms in every picture. Fine, guilty as charged. My message to the world was clear – she’s mine. You can’t have her.

We brought her home and her first night, a miracle happened, as snow fell softly outside during the night, something that almost never happened in Milledgeville. Little did we know, this would be our last peaceful moment for the next six months.

This child did not like to sleep. Well, not at night, anyway. Being a modern dad, I alternated with my wife getting up with the baby, to feed her or change or just listen to her scream for half an hour. We both began to dread the words, “It’s your turn.”
But we survived, and the beautiful little baby turned into a beautiful little girl, with an angelic face, and a healthy dose of attitude. One of my most vivid memories came when she was not even two years old, and was sitting in the living room watching “Barney”. She was very close to the TV set, so I said “Allie, honey, back up from the TV. You’re too close.” She ignored me, so I said “If you don’t move back, I’m going to turn the TV off.” So she scooted back a little, and I heard her say, under her breath, “Whatever.” I swear I’m not making this up.

Being a parent makes you go a little crazy. It makes you want to walk down the street and slap a 6-year-old girl who made your daughter cry. It makes you want to call for a federal investigation into the basketball coach who didn’t put her on the team. It makes you cry at kindergarten graduations and it makes you tremble in fear every time you hear a siren and your child is not at home.

There’s a line in a John Prine song, “Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps.” That is so true. Because 18 years have leapt by me, and next week I am going to take my baby up to The University of Georgia – which, just last week, was declared the top “party school” in the United States. Well, that’s just great.

I know a lot of people who have had children go off to college, and when I talk to them about it, they give me this look of pity that says, “You don’t know what you’re in for.” Well, I know it’s not going to be easy. I can imagine that drive back from Athens is going to be a pretty quiet one.

But I also know that, at some point, you have to let them go. You have to let them become adults, even though they give you reasons daily to wonder how they’re going to survive in the world. But she’s a smart girl, and she’ll make her own mistakes, and she’ll figure it out.

I can only hope that all those times I’ve annoyed her by telling her what not to do, and all of those times I’ve treated her “like a baby”, and all of those words of advice that caused her to roll her eyes, are going to actually have a positive effect.

And even though she’s going to be on her own, my message is the same. She’s still mine. You still can’t have her.