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Dad on a Lark

Remember the old saying, Clothes make the man? If that's true, I'm not much of a man. My morning work commute takes me all of twenty feet from bedroom to office, and I don't dress up for it. Sometimes pajama bottoms and a tee shirt are enough.

Larkin, on the other hand, has suddenly developed an eye for fashion. This morning, when it came time to get dressed, she decided to practice civil disobedience, throwing herself on the floor and stretching her arms above her head — that toddler tantrum that resembles the stadium cheer known as "The Wave, except horizontal (and screaming bloody murder.) And why? Because she didn't like the clothes Molly had chosen for her. "I don't want this shirt!" she pouted. But it's such a nice shirt, we said. "No! I don't like this shirt!"

So here we are. At two years and four months, Larkin has stopped being oblivious to how we dress her. Today begins the era of caring about wearing.

To me that's a bit scary. You start looking down the road and seeing what girls wear these days, the pressures to be sexy. I grew up in the 70s, when everyone wore jeans and work shirts. Girls wore long hair and baggy sweaters, the Ali McGraw look from Love Story. They didn't show a lot of skin. Now, when I go in to the high school where Molly teaches, I get a veritable anatomy lesson. Scary.

Just yesterday Lark and I were coming out of a sporting-goods store together (a basketball for me, a bright orange rubber ball for her), when I saw a mom and her 12ish-year-old daughter getting out of a car. The girl was on the tall and chubby side, and she was wearing a skimpy top and frilly black miniskirt. I imagined the struggles over her outfit — the girl with her heart set on it, the parents gritting their teeth in resistance. She was trying to look sexy (at 12!), and failing; and as I took in her friendly-frumpy bearing and lurching, tall-girl's gait, my heart clutched up to envision watching my own girl heading out the door with so much hope riding on her outfit, and so vulnerable to the cold appraising eyes of her peers.

But that, thank God, is still years ahead. For now, all we had was a minor wardrobe disagreement to work out. We went over to the bureau in Larkin's room and rummaged through the tie-dyed shirts and blue jeans, the pastel shirts bearing glittery logos like "Sweet!" or "I Love My Mom!" Some of these shirts are 2T, and Larkin has pretty much outgrown them, but the way they stretch over her belly is too adorable, and Molly and I can't bring ourselves to unload them yet.

That's the other thing about the new, Caring-about-Wearing era: it means the beginning of the end for the Dressing-Up-Your-Doll era. This is one of the underreported pleasures of being a new parent, especially for a guy. I love buying clothes for Larkin. Molly jokes about how I go to the store for diapers and come back with shoes, slippers, PJs, entire outfits. "There was a sale," I'll say, lamely. True, but does that explain buying not two, not three, but five pairs of pajamas? The truth is, it's just so much fun to dress her up — whether it's her farmer's overalls, or purple Amherst College sweatshirt, or the wild, ragamuffin outfit I brought back from a trip to Ireland, baggy clownlike shorts in a harlequin pattern, with a green and yellow shirt bearing the words, The Leprechauns Made me Do It!

I should admit here that the way Molly and I dress Lark is a little bit, well, boylike. This is partly because Molly as a child was a tomboy who loved climbing trees and playing ball. To her, pants meant sports, freedom, and fun, while a skirt meant manners, confinement, and show. And so Larkin has been in a dress maybe five times in her life. One of her playdate friends, Samara, usually wears dresses, plus ribbons in her hair, and it's funny to see them together — they look like emissaries from two wholly different civilizations. The first time we dressed Larkin in her Easter dress and bonnet, we had to laugh: she looked like a boy whose parents were pretending she was a girl! Molly predicts that our tomboy preferences will turn around and bite us someday, that Larkin will end up wanting to be frilly and lacy and girly. "I just know it!" Molly says.

As for this morning, Larkin eventually settled on a green-and-white striped shirt with flowers embroidered on the front. That one! she said, snatching it up avidly. Standoff defused.

For the time being, anything Larkin pulls from her bureau is still something Molly and I have chosen. This won't always be the case. I both smile and shudder to imagine the stores where the three of us will someday be hashing it out, Molly and I using all our powers of persuasion — and pursestring — to try to bring Larkin around. I can hear us saying, Do you really want to be wearing that?

Which brings back a memory, long buried (mercifully suppressed, perhaps), of my own 12-year-old self. Back then, it seems, I was a wannabe clotheshorse. In 7th grade I saved my paper-route money to buy a fake fur coat — not just a coat with a fur collar, but a full-length fur coat, the whole thing! — because it looked exactly like the one my hero, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, wore in a newspaper photo I'd seen. My parents did everything they could to save me from my own ridiculous taste, but I worshiped Broadway Joe and his outrageous style, and hey, it was MY MONEY. So finally one day, off I went to school, in my fur coat.... for which I was quickly rewarded with a new nickname: "Pimp."

Oh dear. And what's worse, what really makes me tremble for the years ahead, is that I'm afraid I even liked it.

Editor's Note:
You can also read Rand's blog on Family.com, a sister site to Wondertime.com where you can post comments and connect with other Rand fans, and Rand will be able to be part of the conversation as well.