Chapter One: Advice to My Daughters

Untitled Love Story

Chapter One: Advice to My Daughters

First high school boyfriend: Head gamey jerk who cheated on me. I went for the first guy who showed an interest in me. Don’t do that, girls! Go for who YOU like, not the first scrawny guy with a car who asks you out!

The Waid's waitress at age 16.

High school boyfriend B: Showed more interest in cars than in me, nothing to talk about. Don’t be oblivious, girls, and value yourselves!

Boyfriend B was my prom date junior year

High school boyfriend C: Let’s try an older guy with his own apartment. Let’s get in a car wreck and total our car on the way to his place while skipping school. But he had a motorcycle! But he cheated on me … AFTER I loaned him money! Don’t go for material stuff, age and power, girls! Oh, and never loan money to a guy.

Me and Debbie ... do you know how long it took to get those rockin' bangs? And how much Aquanet?

Extremely short-live high school boyfriend D: Let’s try a totally sweet guy who is cute AND who likes me. Let’s kiss one of his friends just for fun while completely sober. Girls, I don’t have to tell you that went south fast. I cried and cried at my own stupidity on that one.

A lot of Sun-in and QT (Quick Tan) went into the making of this girl.

Summer after high school: Can’t hurt to meet some random cute guy cruising and go back to his place because his parents are out of town, right? Then put a big ole Long Island Iced Tea in my 110-pound body. This resulted in the next 5 years of my life being a roller coaster of domestic violence and so many other horrible things I don’t want to even tell you about ever. But these things we do to ourselves and let happen to us shape who we are in the future and how we behave later, for good or bad. Some of the things that happened to me during that time certainly made me the kind of mother I am now … an attachment parent who values her babies above all and who likes to keep them close. Girls, you might call that “suffocation” and “a controlling mother” but I call it good parenting!

Early twenties: Well, let’s switch gears now and date a psychologist (not mine; I certainly don’t need therapy … ha!) who is about twice my age. That can only end well, right? Nah, he peed in my Cheerios and told me it was raining (caught him with another woman – and her kids! -- at his house; he ended up marrying her briefly; his third wife). In an attempt to keep this guy, I proclaimed that I did not need to have children since he didn’t want more. EEEEEK!

Which brings us to our much happier story. And the lesson that GREAT things come out of CRAP things. And that the highest high you will ever feel (lasting love) often comes from the lowest low (crying yourself to sleep from rejection and a broken heart).

1995, I’m 24. I’m sick to death of men. But I know it’s my fault because I do the ultimate picking. A friend gives me a copy of Dr. Laura’s “10 Stupid Things Women do to Mess Up Their Lives.” She looks like a witch. She looks mean. I also start listening to her radio show. Holy crap, she’s talking to me! Have I really done all 10 of those things? Have I really broken every Commandment in the process? Things can’t get any worse. Guess I’ll start looking for someone decent, or not looking. Maybe I’ll make a good lesbian … I hate cooking and cleaning, after all, and like to negotiate. I might look good with short hair. (oh, the stereotypes)

This could possibly be the reason I'm the way I am: my pregnant mother gettin' her drink on in Germany in 1971. (not really!)