The Date

Ella arrives home, flushed and excited, asking if she can use the phone to call her best friend. She disappears into her room with the phone and comes out a few minutes later. “She wasn’t there.”

I look at her carefully. Her cheeks are scarlet. Her sapphire eyes are sparkling. Her freckles are like nutmeg on a bowl of cream. She seems happy. I’m immediately suspicious. What happened at school? I don’t have to wait long. “I was asked out on a date. Will you let me go?”

A date? What kind of date does a ten-year-old go on?

Out loud, I say, “ Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “When he asked me, I said, ‘sure, where,’ and he said, ‘um, I don’t know’.”

I try not to laugh. “Boys sometimes have trouble making a plan. Big boys, too.”

“I told him he could walk me home and we could get candy at the gas station. Can I go, Mom?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Relief crosses her pretty face. “I thought you’d say no. I was scared to tell you.”

She tells me more details of this sweet boy that had the courage to ask my baby for a ‘date.’ He did it at the end of the school day, with his friends watching. That takes courage, I think. This shows character. She tells me his name and reminds me who his parents are. They’re a swim team family. I don’t know them well, but enough to know they’re good people – a family worthy of my princess. Anyway, this is a small town. We know everyone; we look out for one another’s children. Half a dozen or more mothers will see Ella walk home with this boy. She’s safe here.

Then I think, this is one of those moments I should have some words of wisdom about dating, about what she should expect from a boy. But all that comes out is this: “Notice if he pays for the candy. If he doesn’t, it will tell you a lot about his character.”

She looks at me, surprised.

“Just trust me on this,” I say, thinking of the horror stories my single women friends have told me recently about their ‘dates.’

“Okay, I’ll bring money just in case.”

“Good plan.”

But what I really want to say is this:

Choose wisely. Do not settle. Love yourself enough to wait for the man worthy of your time and energy and big heart.

Choose the boy who: treats you like a princess, and later a queen, thinks of you as the center of his universe, considers you endlessly fascinating and interesting and the smartest girl he ever met, knows you are his equal yet still yearns to take care of you, kind enough to ask you questions and listen to the answers, and notices all the subtle nuances that make you unique.

Wait for the one who feels honored and humbled and privileged to be anywhere in your orbit.

Choose someone who loves you as much as I do. And until he comes, love yourself.

On Thursday, Emerson turns 7. She brings home a birthday book filled with letters from her classmates. Included is a letter she’d written to herself.

Dear Me,

I love myself.

I love beeing me.

I love eferbutee on the planit. God to.

I laugh when I see it. Then I cry. Nothing is better than this. It is everything I want for my daughters. Everything.

The afternoon of the ‘date,’ I wait in the pick-up line at the elementary school, my minivan inching forward. There will be no Ella today. She’s walking home with her ‘date.’

Emerson jumps into the van. “Our book order came today,” she shouts, before the minivan’s door has a chance to close. Her cheeks are the same hue as her pink jacket. Strands of hair have escaped her ponytail, framing her face. “So many books, Mommy. Thank you for ordering them for me.”

We head towards home. I think of Ella then. My eyes scan the neighborhood, but I don’t see her.

When we arrive home, Emerson takes the new books out of her backpack, spreading them all over the brown rug by the dining room table. They’re all paperback – bargain books from Scholastic. I remember using my allowance as a child to order books. Those same books are upstairs in my daughters’ room. Books last. Even when boys let you down, you’ll always have books to reach for during the loneliest nights.

“Which will you read first?” I ask.

She chooses Barbie.

“Twenty minutes of reading, okay?”

“I know, Mom.”

She disappears with the Barbie book into the bathroom. I hear her reading out loud. I smile, thinking she’s like an old man with his newspaper.

Later, she holds up another one of the books, entitled, “I Like Myself.”

“Whenever you feel like you want to be someone else, read this book,” she says.

You don’t need that book, I think. And I say a silent prayer. Thank you, God, for this.

The doorbells rings. It’s Ella. She looks so beautiful from the fresh air and the flush of her first crush; it takes my breath away.

Words tumble out of her mouth, relaying the whole ‘date.’

“Did he pay?”

“Yeah, Mom. He insisted. And he brought, like, thirty dollars, but the candy only cost two.”

He insisted. A good boy. A nice boy. A boy of character.

He must have a good mother.

Tess Thompson is a mother before all else, and a writer after that. She has written two novels, “Riversong” and “Caramel and Magnolias.” Please visit her blog, Tess Thompson: Inspiration for Ordinary Life.