I Have A Daughter

[Editor's note: For years a clipping of this article hung on the wall of my office at Bozell Worldwide, an advertising agency in New York. I wish I had noted the publication date.]

original date published: unknown

The "daughter" of the article, age 3,
displaying an early love of shoes 

I have a daughter living in New York City who is a lot like her father. Contentious, contrary, argumentative, and prone to the last word. But she will never bore you, be dull company or cause you to wonder where she stands on an issue.

On the phone the other day she complained, "Dad, you write about my Mother, my Grandfather, you even write about a dog, but you don't mention me."

It is hard to write about the people one is close to and the closer the relationship, the harder it is to write. If I tried to describe her good points as well as her not so endearing traits, anything I would say would be tinged with prejudice. I can say she was never a problem growing up but that she was troublesome in that after the sixth grade, she felt the bathroom in our house was her private territory and no one else should use it without her permission. With that thought in mind, she stocked the bathroom with dozens of bottles of hair shampoo, hair tints, and hair curling solutions. She had concoctions for light hair, dark hair and hair that was thicker than normal. Taking the place that my shaving gear had occupied in the early year of my marriage was a dozen or more bottles of fingernail polish. Four or five tints of red alone. 

She could be followed through the house by the trail of shoes she left in her wake. She loved shoes and owned many pairs but seldom had them on her feet. When she arrived home from school, she kicked off the shoes she was wearing in the living room and continued on to her bedroom where she would try on three pairs, kick two pairs off on the floor of the room, then wear the third pair to the bathroom where she would add them to the collection of her things adorning the floor there.

When she was thirteen, she ran away from home but didn't stay long. Within two or three hours hunger and forgetting what she was mad about drove her back to our door. She was a good student, hard working and dependable, earning mostly Bs. After high school, she completed a five year course in Library Science in just four years. Hard work and dedication made that possible. She had no natural talent in that direction. Immediately after college, she set off for New York to make her mark in show business. But in the world of show biz, for every successful one there are literally millions who fall by the wayside. She has had to come to grips with the real world. And she has adapted pretty well. She claims the title of account executive with an advertising company. I fret about her all alone in that big town, but she seems to be doing well and I am proud. 

I'm glad to have our bathroom back unencumbered with shoes and bottles. But on the days I'm searching through the house for shampoo, I feel a tinge of longing for the good old days.