In third grade I had a pair of favorite earrings my mom forbade me to wear to school. My uncle sent them to me and they were shaped like a moon and had tendrils of beads and crystals hanging from the crescent shape. I loved them immediately and since I was not allowed to wear them out of the house I packed them in my backpack and then put them on when I got on the bus. I think I always had a bit of fear about whether or not I would forget to take them off before I got home but I never did. These earnings carried me through many awkward years of braces and curly hair until my body became what it is today; womanly.
My daughter, O, is at the end of 2nd grade so I should have seen it coming.
“You know how I told you that I liked N?” she asked, after getting in the car at pick-up. I looked in the back where she was sitting in her car seat.
“Yeah?”
“Well, N, also likes me,” she said, “and everybody knows.”
She recounted how N. had combed her hair between two rulers and followed her around during cleanup time pulling her hair gently between the two pieces of wood.
“It feels so GOOD,” she said, clutching a necklace of paper rectangles that N had made, each decorated with the same small flower drawing, and strung on a red piece of yarn. I wasn’t sure whether she meant the rulers or the reciprocation but I said that I was so glad she was experiencing good feelings toward another person and that those feelings were returned.
“That’s going right in my jewelry box when we get home,” she said of the necklace, although later she left it in the car without a second thought.
Her teacher, Miss M, had already told the class that were no boyfriends and girlfriends allowed in second grade, O said, as we took the rest of the 30 minute ride back to our apartment.
I talked way too into this point, saying I thought there was no need to say no to good feelings but that probably they WERE too young to be feeling anything more than admiration for others. It was clear that all of that made no sense to O, as I told her that later she’d know in her body when her feelings meant she’d be ready for kissing.
“I had my first boyfriend when I was in third grade,” I told her, “but also we never kissed. I didn’t have my first kiss until much later and even then I didn’t like kissing at first at all.” I didn’t tell her the scene, but it flashed back immediately, how I stood in front of the building after a school dance and traded gum with another kid with my tongue. I felt sure I would never want to kiss anyone again. I did, however, cover the back of my closet door kiss marks made of lipstick.
I think kissing was not even remotely on O’s radar, although she mentioned that as soon as people found out about N and her liking each other, there was a rumor about them kissing in the coat room.
Before I unlocked our front door, she asked about wearing makeup to school and reminded me that M and F and E all wear makeup to school and I said I’d think about it, which is my weak way of saying no. Somewhere I stored in my mind that third grade would be a fine time to wear makeup although I should admit I was planning on using it as leverage, for example: “If you brush your teeth every night without me asking all summer you can wear makeup to school next year.” But I also don’t know why I was saying no. I wasn’t allowed to own or wear makeup maybe ever and also, third grade also seems ridiculously early to start signaling availability so why wasn’t I fine with makeup now, when it meant nothing at all?
“Can I get new clothes?” she asked when we were inside.“I want some skirts to wear for N.”
This struck me as so strange and curious that I just said yes but that doesn’t mean I went ahead and bought any.
The next morning, O brought up wearing makeup to school again.
“You can wear your face paints as makeup,” I said, giving her a loophole.
“As eyeshadow?” her dad said incredulously. I saw that we were in danger of stepping into some unconscious script, where I was to be her guide into femininity and guile and he was to be her manager and protector from boys who only wanted one thing.
“She can wear her face paints however she wants,” I said. O put green on her eyelids all the way up to her eyebrows and also over them.
“She likes it that way,” I said, when A mentioned to O that she had also gotten the green on her eyebrows, which I knew because one day she went to school with them painted rainbow. I’m not sure he’s wrong about guiding her on how makeup is used if she’s going to be using it at all, but felt I was asserting something important: that I was not going to buy makeup as products but that I’m not opposed to dressing up and that I don’t want that dress up to be policed.
When I picked O up the next day I asked, among other things, “How’d things go with N.?”
“I don’t like him anymore,” she said, with a tone of it’s over.
“I told everyone already.” And then, with a straight face said: “I just don’t think he’s the person for me.”
I almost made a joke about the fickle nature of our (women’s) feelings, but luckily I stopped myself.
“What about the necklace?” I asked.
“You can have it,” she shrugged.