Making a Friend of Daughter by Virginia Dale

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 24, 1915

Making a Friend of Daughter

By Virginia Dale

When I was a little girl, my mother once sent me with a note to our washerwoman, who lived, with her five daughters, in a small, unpainted house on the outskirts of the little town.

That shanty, with its yard inclosed by a ramshackle fence, was the most interesting place I had ever visited. Over the dilapidated front door an old-fashioned gourd vine flourished. At the side of the house was a well, with gourds of fascinating shapes and sizes suspended in the shade of the arbor for the convenience of those who were thirsty. In the front yard, beds of rank dog fennel were outlined with whitewashed stones. Hanging in the sun beside the kitchen door was a wide-mouthed, greasy-looking bottle in which the family cure-all, dog fennel salve, was brewing. Back of the house was a curious mound of earth, which I was told contained turnips for the winter. One of the girls dug out an enormous white and purple one. Another ran into the house, and brought out an ornate glass saltcellar filled with the coarsest—and the sweetest—salt a human being ever tasted. With that turnip and the salt, we were going to have a party!

The five girls led the way to the extreme end of the lot, and we wedged ourselves into a narrow passage between a chicken coop and a board fence that kept the alley out of the back yard. This space was the playhouse. It was furnished with broken stools, a wooden horse, and the most fascinating collection of broken dishes and bottles that ever ravished childish eyes. On the ledge of the fence was a fragment of vase containing the ubiquitous dog fennel blossoms. That ledge was the table from which we were to eat the turnip and salt, and drink cool water from dripping gourds. Just as we had begun our feast, the mother appeared with a bag of crackers. That was the most delicious repast I had ever tasted. It was so good that I could hardly wait to get home to tell my mother all about it.

I shall never forget her look of horror as I recounted my adventure, nor the chill of fear and rebuff that settled like a wet blanket over my bubbling enthusiasm. It was a humiliating and tearful time; and when it was all over, I had one distinct impression—that hereafter I would spare my mother the details of all thrilling or dangerous experiences. By this plan, I argued, she would be saved much anxiety. It worked beautifully; and from that day to this I have never told my mother the things I should have told her, the things I would gladly have told her had I been less afraid of the consequences.

Now I am a mother myself. I have a spirited daughter ten years old. She has an adventurous disposition that is forever seeking the “why” of everything. Girls with temperaments like hers need extremely careful guidance. She is not like a reed, to be bent at will, but like a brittle twig that too sudden bending breaks. It has always been my greatest concern to bend her gently in the right direction, a process that is slower than breaking, but to my mind infinitely better. To guide her intelligently, it is first necessary to keep her confidence, which is easier said than done; because confidences are as easily frightened away as birds—a too sudden move, and, whir-r-r-r! away they fly!

When my daughter first began to prattle, I determined never, never to be visibly shocked at anything she said or did or thought, no matter how shocking or alarming it might be. You see I have never forgotten the lesson of the raw turnip. Sometimes my very soul has quaked within me because of something she has said or done and told me about afterward; but, to my knowledge, I have never frightened away a confidence by allowing this fear to show in my face or manner. When it has been something that needed serious thought, I have waited an hour, a day, a week, as the case demanded, and then laid siege to the fault in a roundabout way. I never give her a chance to think, “I wouldn’t have been given that scolding if I had not told her; after this I won’t tell her.”

One of the best ways to get and keep a girl’s confidence is to keep in touch with her viewpoint. Children live in a different world from the one inhabited by grown-ups; and it doesn’t seem quite fair to expect them to come and live in ours—which is a very strange place, indeed—unless we sometimes return their visits and become acquainted with theirs.

There have been times in my life when it was almost martyrdom to be dragged away from some important work and led out into the yard where half a dozen youngsters had prepared a tea party on the lawn, and placed one of my rugs on the grass for me to sit upon while I presided at the teapot—filled with tepid catnip tea! But after the first plunge into their world of make-believe, I always have a perfectly delightful time, and I get the children’s viewpoint.

The other afternoon my little girl went to a party. It was just around the corner, so I was not worried when dusk came and she had not returned. When she did come, something in her face telegraphed to me the knowledge that either she had not had a good time or she had something on her mind that she disliked to tell me. I waited—smiling—until she was ready. Suddenly, and with an audible gasp, she exclaimed, “A boy walked home with me!”

This was her first experience with an escort, and she evidently feared the consequences. I said, “Why, what a nice, gentlemanly thing for that boy to do! Did the hostess ask him to walk around with you because it was getting dark?” Her look of relief was actually pitiful. “No,” she said, shyly, “I don’t think she did, because he asked me if he might.” There was a little silence. I knew there was more to come. “And we played kissing games,” she faltered. “I didn’t like to be disagreeable and spoil everything, so I played, too.”

She knows I do not approve of kissing games. “Well,” I said, “of course, one has to be polite, but there are so many more interesting things to do at parties that I am a little surprised that Mrs. Blank did not think of them. When we have your birthday party, we’ll think up a lot of new games.”

“A boy walked home with Mary, too, but she isn’t going to tell her mother, because she’ll scold,” she commented.

Mary’s mother is a charming woman, but she is so afraid about Mary’s behavior that she makes the child’s life miserable. She is a model of dignity; always lovingly stern and reproving. I suspect that in her heart she regards me as a foolish, weak-minded, frivolous person who should never have been intrusted with the bringing up of a woman-child! Just the same, she is always glad when I take Mary with us on our rambles through the woods or for a picnic beside a particularly happy brook we know.

How the secrets do pop out of the little hearts out there in the woods! They are not afraid when they are on their own ground, so to speak. Things they would hesitate to say in my drawing-room come as naturally as spring flowers when I join them on excursions into their world. They sit on tree trunks and tell each other’s fortunes with daisy petals. They talk about the boys they like; about what they did when they were little(!), and what they are going to do when they are big. They open their

hearts as frankly as if I were a bowler that neither heard nor saw. And all the time I am drinking in every syllable—indexing every new emotion, listening for the first tone of self-consciousness, ready to sweeten the first poisoned thought, waiting to guide to a safe arbor the groping tendrils of these expanding minds.

The things my daughter tells me are not always beautiful things. Upon one occasion she told me frankly things that I feared would sear the freshness of her lips. The story was about a boy at school, a boy now recognized and cared for as a degenerate. Think of the evil that would have festered in my daughter’s mind if she had kept this story from me and deprived me of the power of drenching it with an antiseptic solution of common sense, and purifying it with the sunlight of love and sympathy and understanding!

Sometimes the piano is dusty; occasionally the meals are a little late; and very often while I am reading aloud, I have a feeling that I should be darning the stockings. But I persuade myself that I have a long future in which to darn and dust and serve meals right on the minute, and just a few precious years in which to make a lifelong friend of my daughter.—Virginia Dale, in McCall’s Magazine.