My daughters are all drop-dead gorgeous and I don’t know a single person in their right mind who would disagree with my unprejudiced assessment. I suppose that most people think being a natural beauty is a great blessing, but it has been my observation that stunningly beautiful women may actually be severely handicapped. It is an easy thing to create jealousy in other women and most men do not appear to think all that clearly around them, so, why not just rely on that God given gift to make your way in the world? Unfortunately, women who rely solely on their beauty may be prone to more frequent brain cramps. Personally, I have found that the women who are the most interesting and fun to be around are women who don’t mind competing with men intellectually and physically. They are far more interested in taking a hike in the woods than sitting around a table in a sewing circle. They would rather go SCUBA diving in the Cayman Islands than lay around on the beach all day reading “50 Shades of Gray.”
I b
ring this subject up because as my daughter Carrie and I were driving back from an “open mike” musical event in Concord today she brought up the subject of how so many women were boring to be around. A case in point involved a very short “hike” some of the women in her church took and the subject of their conversation as they laborious trudged long the two-mile trail was, “What is the best detergent to use for washing clothes?” Poor Carrie she is made of sterner stuff. When she was 7 years old I insisted she hike the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail with me. It was a short 10-mile hike to Indian Gardens and back, and as the temperature was only a shade (of course there was none) over a 100 degrees I didn’t think it would be too strenuous. I assured her that this was normal healthy activity for a young girl. Her ruggedness only increased from then on. In college she went on a 5-mile run with a guy who wanted to court her but when he complained about a pain in his heel the entire way she dumped him. Later, when she discovered that he had been running with a toothpick jammed in his heel you would think that she might have shown some remorse for her presumptive action, to the contrary, her comment was, “Well, dad I think he really was wimpy—all that whining over a little toothpick.”
Megan, my youngest beauty is far and away the strongest—in more ways than one. I recall that as a young girl she was at a 6th grade birthday party for a friend and when she came home she was astounded at how wimpy all the girls were. Some of the boys were trying to impress the girls by demonstrating their strength lifting barbells. One of the boys failed to curl a 65 pound weight and Megan went over and innocently picked up the weight and said, “Is this what you are trying to do?” and proceeded to show him how it was done. To this day she out performs and out works any three people I know. Beauty, faithfulness and compassion—what a lady.
I suppose SAM got the worst of it in that she wasn’t born a boy and I insisted on calling her by her initials (Stephanie Adina Moore). She, unfortunately for me but perhaps fortunate for her, has her dad’s assertive, self-willed stubborn streak. Though I was already in the habit of calling her SAM she wanted to affirm her identity as a girl, so at the age of four she confronted me about this inappropriate sobriquet. She said, “Dad, SAM is a boy’s name and I am a girl. If you like you may call me Steph, Stephy or Stephanie but not SAM.” I was floored! Yet, I was persuaded then, as I am now, that a person should be called by whatever name they want (I have a friend whose name is Jerry but he goes by the name Mason—that makes sense to me), so I relented. Seven years later, after her identity as a girl was clearly established I approached the subject of her nickname again. She was 13 years old and, as with Carrie, I had taken her out of school for a week’s adventure to celebrate being a teenager. So at just the appropriate moment, while we were being flooded out of our tent one night in a torrential rainstorm on Prince Edward Island I asked her—“What would you think about letting just me call you SAM?” She thought for a moment and then gave her consent. Incidentally, like any good camping buddy, she never uttered a word of complain about our discomfort in the rain and eating soggy food—“what a guy!”
Well, there you have it, three gorgeous women who are now all smarter and tougher than their dad and who don’t bore men to tears with dull talk about what’s the best detergent to use for getting their faded T shirts “sunshine bright.” Of course, the downside of all this is that I have to do my own laundry, but it was worth it to have fun daughters to pal around with. Besides I just throw all that stuff in wash together—eventually they all come out one color and I don’t have to worry about my clothes matching.