Our Jen, with first daughter Sophie. This story was first published in The Bridgton News, April, 2010, and later published in the second book in The Dad Story Project series: THE TUG OF THE STRING: Stories about staying connected
I began praying for my future daughter-in-law one early spring day after my barely-pubescent son made a suspicious request. “Dad, I need some string,” he said, without making eye contact.
Later, I found Jeremiah crouching on the dining room floor staring eagerly out a window. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Get down,” he whispered, motioning me to join him in his foxhole. So there the two of us squatted, Kilroy-like, with just our fingers and noses above the sill. “There, look, across the street,” the boy said; and looking I saw the stout bough of a pine tree bent down over the sidewalk under great tension, fixed in place by the string and some cleverly arranged sticks. This was during Jeremiah’s Daniel Boone phase, and I knew in the first instant that I was looking at a snare; in the second instant I realized that I had taught him how to make it; and in the third instant I was certain that I was going to get in trouble for this. The boy cut right through the technical mumbo jumbo: “I’m going to catch a girl,” he said. Then he let out a sinister little chuckle and rubbed his hands together. “I used one of Mom’s lipsticks for bait.”
Just then two junior-high girls came into view, walking home from school, holding their books close in front of them, chatting away, oblivious to their impending peril. They slowed as they approached the trap, and then stopped, and one of the girls bent and reached toward the ground. Just before she triggered the diabolical device, the second girl figured it all out, shrieked, and yanked her friend upright by her ponytail. Screaming, they ran north. “Rats,” Jeremiah muttered.
Afraid of the answer, but contractually obligated to ask it based on DNA testing, I queried anyway. “So, son, um, what would you do if you caught a girl?” The lad fired back without hesitation: “Just like a trout, Dad, first you have to gut ‘em.” A thin shiver slithered up my spine.
I realized just then, that on some distant day my son was going to have to make his way in this world without my guidance and protection, and like me, he would need a wife. As Proverbs 18:22 tells us, “He who finds a wife, finds a good thing,” and so I commenced praying for my daughter-in-law. I didn’t know her name yet, or where she was from, or the shade of her hair, or her favorite color, or the sound of her laugh — I only knew that my son would need her, and that she was going to have to be kind and smart and brave.
For the next fifteen years or so, as my son rose in stature and grew in mind and heart, I prayed for his future girl, and like all things hoped for, the waiting was hard. It reminded me of when I was little and gagging down enough bowls of Fortified Sawdust Clusters at breakfast to finally have enough proof-of-purchase seals to send away for the latest You’ve-Gotta-Have-This-Thing! advertised on the back of the cereal box. Then I would stand at the bottom of the driveway every day, waiting for the mailman to arrive and for my life to change. But, inevitably, when the erector set, or the Sea Monkeys, or the Grow Your Own Salt Crystals! kit, or the secret decoder ring finally arrived, I would always end up disappointed. The thing would be chintzy, or small, or it would break, or it wouldn’t work, or it simply wouldn’t decode anything. Sometimes, they say, the hoping is better than the having.
And then the future finally arrived, bringing Jennifer, from Harpswell, Maine, with her strawberry hair, who loves pink and has a gentle laugh that drives away storm clouds. She turned out to be kind and smart and brave and she bounced into our lives and stole our hearts and made us all smile and then she married my son. And now we can’t imagine life without her — sometimes you don’t know how much you are going to love something until you have it.
I thank God for my daughter-in-law and I pray for her still, although it’s easier now because I can picture her smile and hear her laugh. After all those years of waiting, she’s finally here, and she’s more precious than any of us ever could have imagined. I pray that her life with my wonderful son is happy and blessed. And I pray that when Jeremiah asks for string, that Jennifer has the courage to look him straight in the eye and say, “Why? What are you going to do with it?”
Editor’s Note: After seven years of marriage, Jen looks our son straight in the eye all the time. It’s the same look I still get from my wife…