Q&A with my Dad, Part 2

 My question:

Lilly is 13. She tells you that she thinks she loves a boy, but isn't sure what love is or what it feels like. What would you say if she asked you what you thought?

Dad's answer:

This is a difficult one. It almost qualifies as a trick question. How do you talk about love to a 13-year old girl, whose life has just passed from teddy bears, is now probably obsessed with some boy band, and will soon be learning how to shoot tequila and play beer pong as part of that sacred American rite of passage, getting a college degree? Talking about love is tough enough with an adult, even one who has read books. Over the years, many people have asked me how they will know when they are in love, really in love, and I tend to mumble platitudes and hope they go away before I say something I will regret. The truth is that you know because you know, and you are in love, and that is that. It is a bit like asking how you will know if you are hungry or wet or tired. You will know, although these days there are probably consultants and studies to help you know for certain, and drugs to control everything and stop you from feeling the way you feel, because it is probably bad.

So, if Lilly, at 13, asked me about love, I would probably say that it was beautiful to hear her say that, and he must be someone very nice. I would ask her what she felt, and how she knew him. At 13, as I recall from my earlier days as a father, a child is no longer a child, but not yet really close to being an adult. There is an energy and boldness about 13, a confidence and a hope, and also a strange sense of insecurity and awkwardness. At 13, you have not yet decided you are immortal, nor that all people over 21 are stupid. That comes at about 14 or 15. But you know you have rights, and you want them respected. You know you are not a little child, and you don't expect to be treated like one. The worst thing a parent can do, at any stage, is to communicate a lack of respect. Respect is the foundation of trust and love. Without it, nothing survives, nothing grows. I would convey respect, and speak to this young, good person as she deserved to be replied to.

My temptation, of course,would be to say that at 13 you know nothing of love. You get infatuated, and you think you know more than you do. You have hormones starting to make their presence felt, and you find it hard to believe that emotions that feel so good could in any way lead to harm or sadness. I would be tempted to say that most boys are shallow creatures, more interested in sexual conquest than meaningful relationships, and that a teenage boy is not to be trusted in matters of the heart. Failing that, my temptation would be to visit the boy, and caution him that if he ever did anything to hurt my granddaughter, people would find his body parts scattered across a dozen states.

But I would resist these temptations, and I would hear her speak of love as if she were the first person to have discovered it, which is in a sense true, because love only exists now, and is new for each person when they feel it first. I would encourage her to look at her mother and father as fine people who know a lot about love, and as people she should always feel comfortable chatting too, because they were young too, and felt just as she is feeling. And I would hope that she heard me and spoke her heart, and that in a week or a month she realized that the boy was just a boy, like most boys, and that she would have a lot more fun hanging out with her girl friends and being herself. There is no rush to grow up, and boys don't change that much.

My temptation would also be to sit back and talk to her of what it is like when you finally meet someone special, and how in a strange moment you do just know. You want to be with that person, and you talk of dreams for the future, and in the depth of your soul you know they make you better than you would ever be without them, that they are what you are not, that you honestly would die for them. I would want to talk of walks along beaches in the evening, of holding hands, of the first kiss, and the second. I would want to talk of the great joy of growing older together, of seeing your love multiplied with a family, and of being happy to be in love and married to your best friend.

But this would all go over Lilly's head, and it would confuse her. It would be disrespectful to talk when I should listen, and these are things we all must discover for ourselves, in our own way, at the right time. And after we had chatted, I would probably give her a hug and thank her for trusting me with such an important question.