THEN THERE WAS JACKSON.
When I told her I was going to write a little bit about her for this story, she confronted me at my desk with this piece of character advice:
“If you make me out to be some self-centered little bitch,” she said, “I will tear out those pages and burn them. Are we clear?”
In the interest of avoiding a fiery edit, I’ll start with this: The moment I first learned I had a daughter was the happiest moment of my life so far.
Not that having a son wasn’t a thrill and a celebration, but Logan’s birth was more stressful than Jack’s. Traca and I didn’t know what to expect when our first child was born. Everything was new. Plus, Logan’s delivery was a long, painful process that scared us as much as it excited us. Jackson’s birth was just … different.
Secretly, I wanted a girl that day. Of course, I said all the politically correct things parents are obligated to say to superstitiously avoid birth defects or to appear unselfish. Things like “Another boy would be perfect,” and “So long as it’s healthy,” but honestly, deep down, I wanted a girl.
As Traca went into labor, we didn’t know the sex of the child, but we didn’t have to wait long to find out. Unlike Logan’s slow, exhausting delivery, Jackson’s arrival was like the birth of a comet: fast, blazing, intense, producing a concentrated pain within Traca the likes of which I can only—thank the Lord—imagine. Through the fire, I kept saying “her” and “she” as in “Here she comes,” and, “We almost have her,” but I didn’t know, not for sure. It wasn’t until Traca finally pushed Jackson’s little body into the world and our midwife held her up like baby Simba, her wrinkled pink bum facing us. Then Traca and I watched, suspended, breathless, as Jackson made her first grand entrance … a slow, dramatic turn … until there was no mistaking the anatomy. A girl! A beautiful baby girl. My heart exploded like fireworks.
Then fourteen years passed.
One day, after Traca and I returned from the Bahamas, I stood in the doorway of Jackson’s room, watching her. The place was a disaster. The floor was covered with dirty clothes as if a laundry bomb had gone off. She was sitting up in bed, laptop on her lap, cell phone in her hand, headphones in her ears, ignoring me. I knew she knew I was there but she didn’t look up. So I just waited, wondering: When did she get so long? She was five foot six, beautiful in ways you didn’t have to be her father to recognize. She had long brown hair like her mom’s, naturally wavy but pin-straight at the moment, hanging like a silky curtain around her pretty face. Most of her girlfriends were straightening their hair for school, so Jack ironed hers every morning as well. It wasn’t my choice. I loved her full tangle of hair. But on teen fashion issues, my opinion didn’t matter. Her friends mattered, belonging mattered, and if straight hair was the highest price she had to pay, I was all for it. Still, I worried about her sometimes.
I’ve always had a good connection with Jackson, right from the start. When she was very small, maybe two years old, I once woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. The house was still and quiet, and as I lay there in the dark, I started thinking about my daughter. Her room was separated from mine by a wall, and as I pictured her sleeping in her crib, I found myself silently repeating her name like a mantra:
Jackson … Jackson … Jackson …
“Daddy?” she answered, calling out as if she’d read my mind.
I took this as proof of our special bond, but she clearly wasn’t tuned into me so acutely as I stood in her doorway. I know it’s normal, that the little girl she used to be was long gone, but the sentimental truth was: I missed her. I missed being with her, talking with her, giving her horsey rides up the stairs every night …
“Horsey?” she used to say, patting my hair, my flowing mane. “Carry me, please.”
So I’d flop down on the ground, prance a bit, snort and buck, until she said, “Good horsey. Easy, boy.” Then she’d climb onto my back and hold my neck tight as I galloped up the stairs, always rearing midway, soothed only by a kiss on the cheek. We did this every night for years until one night she just climbed the stairs on her own. I watched her from the couch, feeling like an abandoned toy, snorting my horse sound to get her attention.
“Not tonight, Horsey,” she said tiredly. Just like that, it was over.
Of course I had known it wouldn’t last forever; even while it was happening, I knew to savor it. She used to call me from her bed after I’d already tucked her in. “Daddy? I want a drink of water,” she’d say. So I’d bring some water and hold it for her little mouth and tuck her in again. Then, when I was back downstairs for all of thirty seconds, she’d say, “Daddy? Can you read me a story?” So I’d go back up and grab a book, snuggle beside her, and read it with as much dramatic flair as I could muster. When it was over, I’d kiss her head and go downstairs and wait. “Daddy? I’m scared,” or, “Daddy? I dropped my teddy,” or “Daddy? Can you read me another story?”
One night as I prepared to bound up the stairs for something like the fifth time, Traca stopped me. “She’s just playing you,” she said. “She doesn’t need any of this. She needs to go to sleep. She’ll keep calling you if you keep going up.”
“I know,” I said. “But she won’t be calling me forever.”
Jackson … Jackson … Jackson …
I stood at her door thinking her name, but I got nothing. She just clicked her stupid computer keys and answered her annoying cell phone and listened to her inane hip-hop music about shaking your booty down to the ground or doing it all night long. It was a sad tableau, really.
Traca and I resisted getting Jackson a cell phone for as long as non-Amish parents can be expected to hold out, long after all her friends were flaunting their second cute-as-candy flip phones, but eventually she wore us down. Once armed, Jack took to texting like a prodigy, racking up over eight thousand texts in her first month. With only 420 waking hours in the average month (assuming fourteen hours a day for thirty days), that means Jackson received or sent nearly twenty messages every hour of the day, or one every three minutes. This number becomes even more impressive when you subtract the six hours per day that phones are not allowed in school, leaving a near-constant texting marathon for Jackson’s fingers to run. Add to this all her favorite shows, favorite songs, favorite stars, favorite causes, favorite everything—all offering their incessant Twitter–Facebook feeds like tiny doses of crack to the strung-out teen info-junkies of the world … it’s amazing Jack had time to eat, much less do homework.
Now, I know what all you better parents are saying. Shut it off, you whiner! Pull the plug if you don’t want it. And we did … once. When we thought Jackson’s usage was getting way out of hand, we cut the cord and took away her computer and phone indefinitely, which—as any parent who’s ever taken this hard-line stance with a teen daughter can attest—is the opposite of LOL. We tried to reason with her, explain our good intentions … but Jack wasn’t listening. When she realized we were serious, she stood up, threw her phone against the wall, said she hated us for the first (and only) time in her life, and stormed out of the room.
Then an unexpected thing happened. The next day, she started talking. Maybe out of boredom, but who cares? She hung around after dinner. She played a board (bored) game with me. In a few days, she seemed relaxed and focused, engaged and full of humor. It was a beautiful transformation that lasted for a full six months—until the day we reluctantly returned her electronics to her, and she began to withdraw once again.
More than for anyone else in the family, I wanted the trip for Jack. I wanted her to leave the phone and the computer and the hair straightener at home. I wanted her to unplug from her social networks, to have a chance to get to know herself beyond her user name and password, to look up from cyberspace and see the great big world all around her, to reach beyond herself to someone, anyone, who clearly needed more than she did. I wanted her to imagine, to dream, to relax, and to see how good that feels. The fact that she would miss a year of high school senior boys—I was okay with that. The fact that we might one day find ourselves somewhere in the world walking arm in arm like the old friends we used to be … I was okay with that, too.
When we told Jackson about our plans, she resisted the idea, as I had known she would. “Freshman year is kind of a big deal,” she said, as if reminding me of a great and obvious truth. But before long, she started to soften, using phrases like “If we go,” and “I’m not saying I’m in, but,” which basically meant she was in and we were going.
With just a few months left before we hit the road, I stood in her doorway, watching her, thinking her name, wanting her to turn my way as she had done on the day she was born. Though I couldn’t carry her up the stairs anymore without real effort, I wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. I was her horsey, her storyteller, her biggest fan.
Come on, Jackson.
At last she looked up. “What?” she said, annoyed.
“Hi,” I said.
“Creeper. Get out of my room,” she said flatly before disappearing down the electronic rabbit hole once more.