Letter to My Daughter by George Bishop Page B

charge.
    That’d be great, I told him. Wow. Okay. Sure. I just had to ask my parents first.
    “Okay, so … great. See you Friday,” he said.
    “See you Friday.”
    “Great.”
    “Great!”
    I had never been invited to a party in Baton Rouge, much less to a party involving swimming and billiards. I pictured the evening as a scene out of Gone with the Wind , with plantation-sized houses and elegant Southern girls sweeping down curved stairways in green gowns, while the men-Chip looking debonair in a gray tailcoat—leaned against the mantel in the billiard room sipping bourbon. With this one phone call, Chip had reached down his hand to snatch me up into a world of privilege and ease, a universe away from the dull family farms and bleak trailer parks of Zachary. I felt a little like Cinderella, or whatever the Southern version of her would be. At dinner that night I asked my parents if I could go.
    “See what your father thinks,” my mother said.
    “You want to what?” my father asked, barely looking up from his fried liver and onions.
    “Borrow the car to drive to Baton Rouge for a party.”
    “Don’t think so,” he said, and went back to eating.
    “Mom?” I pleaded.
    She shrugged. “If your father says no—”
    I stared at her, this pinch-faced stranger sitting a hundred miles away at the end of the table who nonetheless wielded absolute power over me, who with a word could send me to a convent school in another city or deny me the chance to attend the most important party I’d ever been invited to, one that had the potential to change my life forever.
    I couldn’t contain myself. “You’re useless. You know that?” I cried. “Useless! What good are you as a mother? You’re nothing. You don’t do anything. You just sit there and agree with whatever he says. You don’t help me, you don’t care, you don’t … I never get to go to parties! I never go anywhere!” I threw down my napkin and left the table.
    “You come back here and apologize, young lady!” my father shouted, his mouth full of potatoes.
    “I hate living in this house!” I yelled, slamming my bedroom door.
    •   •   •
    Sound familiar, Liz? It does to me. In fact, I’m ashamed at how familiar it sounds. I didn’t curse my parents and steal their car and leave, but I sure wanted to.
    That was the night when, crying furiously in my room, I promised myself I would never treat my daughter the way my mother treated me. No, that would never happen. Because my daughter and I, I swore, would be best friends. We’d laugh and gossip. I’d give her advice about boys, and she’d tell me when my clothes were beginning to look frumpy and old-fashioned. When her father said no, I’d take her aside, slip a few dollars into her hand, and tell her not to worry, she should go ahead and enjoy herself.
    As it turns out, Liz, we talk about as little as my mother and I did, don’t we? You huff and frown whenever I ask you to take out your earphones, and if I dare try to broach personal matters with you, you groan like I’m hurting you. Just like I did, you keep your private life locked up tight in a cupboard, hiding it from the one person who most wants to help you.
    Am I really that bad? As bad as my own mother? I don’t feel like a villain, and yet you probably see me that way: a mean old witch whose only aim is to keep you from having any fun in life. But as hard as it may be to believe, your father and I really do have your best interests at heart. We might screw up now and then—we’re only human, after all—but we don’t set out to be cruel. I don’t think any parent does.
    If I could speak now to my teenage self, I might tell her to be more forgiving of her parents. Maybe they were doing the best they could. It’s possible. If adulthood has taught me anything, it’s that even grown-ups are fallible. We’re not a whole lot smarter than we were when we were teenagers. We still feel the same stir of emotions, the same