For young Alexi, Girl Scouts was a weekly interruption to the life of independence I had at home with my dad and brother. I became self-conscious underneath the Scout moms’ constant observation and I started questioning my every move. At the same time, I felt I was stronger and wiser than the other girls who had moms—how do you become confident and independent if you are constantly given a helping hand, even when you might not need it? I know I may be insulting every mom walking this earth and I’m sorry for that. But before moms ever helped me, they hurt me. Though I’m certain it was unintentional, they made me feel I was lacking something fundamental. They pushed too much, too soon.
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One time I peed in my sleeping bag during a Girl Scout camping trip, and I concocted an elaborate story about how a raccoon had entered the old manor where we all bunked, crept into my sleeping bag, and peed. I then went on to explain how I heroically scared it away before it could pee in anyone else’s sleeping bag—thereby justifying the presence of urine in only my sleeping bag. All the girls believed me, but the mom-leaders pulled me aside and told me they knew I was lying, and lying was very bad. My dad had to make the hour-long drive to the campsite to deliver a fresh sleeping bag, but he didn’t have anything to say about my raccoon cover story. This lie didn’t actually hurt anybody. My dad knew when to let me take care of myself in the ways I knew how.
I know the Girl Scout moms made sure to notify him about my big lie, and I could tell that they were disappointed he didn’t discipline me. This made me very angry. I’ve always hated it when I can tell that my dad feels judged by other parents, however subtly. There are lots of things most parents do that my dad never did. I have never and probably never will share forks, cups, or plates with my dad. He’d rather order me my own hot chocolate than give me a sip of his. I have never had the nightmares cuddled out of me, either—he preferred to stand in my doorway and watch me fall asleep on my own.
But I knew that my dad loved me more than anything in the world, just in his own specific and intentional ways. Every night when he tucked me in he would say, without fail, “You know, you’re a good kid, Lex. Did anyone ever tell you you’re a good kid?” He repeated this ritual every single night, and I used to think he was crazy. But he was just parenting in the way he knew how. Hugs and cuddles weren’t his way—his was a more nitty-gritty, showing-up-every-day kind of effort. I think he was telling me, and also himself, that yes, I was turning out okay. I was doing an all right job and he was doing an all right job. And if it had been done any other way, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’ve learned that it’s not productive to wonder too much about what my life could have been like if things had been different. I once read that the chances of any person being born as themselves instead of as a different genetic combination is estimated to be the same as if two million people rolled a trillion-sided die and all got the same number. We are who we are. We are all little marvels.
My dad had to leave the campsite shortly after making the sleeping-bag delivery because there were NO BOYS ALLOWED. I was sad to see him go and stewed in my shame, thinking I was destined to forever feel out of place in this Girl Scout world. But then the sun went down and the moms built a campfire and we sang songs and ate s’mores and I felt a shift, as if the darkness and the flickering campfire allowed me to blend in with the other girls and forget the thing that made me different. Being one silhouette among many gathered around the campfire felt deeply good, like the gooey center of a roasted marshmallow. It was the first time I can remember when I didn’t feel responsible for myself. I was a part of a crowd of little girls and sillies and I really appreciate that the moms let us kids just be. I finally allowed myself to fit in like one marshmallow among many.
Sometimes feeling undifferentiated is the nicest feeling in the world. Nobody looked at me like I needed special help. I felt included but not scrutinized. I let go of my anxiety, like when you don’t realize you’re clenching your jaw but then you open your mouth for a moment and, suddenly, you feel relief. At least for the moment, I stopped labeling myself as different. I licked my marshmallow fingers, touched the cool earth under my little butt, and felt, for the first time, like a kid.
I haven’t officially quit the Girl Scouts. I think I may even still be a member on a list somewhere deep within my troop’s archives. The troop moms will always hold a special place in my heart. I am sure I was as much a handful to them as they were to me. I want them to know it was worth the effort.
i admire pickles because there is no one moment that makes a pickle
a pickle. it is a thing that happens over time. pickles are patient.
A VERY BIG ALEXI
Because my dad had to work so much, he hired live-in au pairs who would stay with us for a year at a time when I was in elementary school. They were always between nineteen and twenty-two years old and female, which my dad felt was important. Some wore bras and some didn’t, and they all smelled nice even without deodorant. They seemed to me to be a very specific kind of woman, the type who ate sweets whenever she wanted and said what was on her mind without thinking twice. They weren’t afraid to touch my hair and wipe my face when I had smudgy chocolate streaks around my mouth. I ate the best chocolate growing up because all of it was from Europe, brought by the au pairs or sent to them in care packages from their homeland.
The visas these au pairs were on only let them stay with us for one year and not a day longer. This wasn’t up to me, this was up to the government. The government doesn’t care at all if you loved this au pair so much you wished she would stay forever, or if you hated that au pair so much that you wanted her to leave right this instant. I treated my au pairs like single-serving disposable mothers. I squeezed everything I could out of them. This was my right—they were there to be my surrogate moms. Some of them I hated. But the ones I loved, I really loved. I loved them in an unreasonable way that can only come from a place of extreme desperation, and an awareness that one day in the near future they would be gone. I loved them fiercely as if they were terminally ill, because to me what was the difference? As far as I was concerned, all of my au pairs had one year to live.
Each au pair taught me how to count to ten in her home language, so I can count to ten in about eight different Eastern European languages, and maybe more if I really try. One of the au pairs stole jewelry and money from us. Some of them crashed our family car and others stayed out way too late at night on this likely first-time trip to the United States. But my dad never got angry, and he never fired them before their one-year tenure was up because he must have judged that these infractions did not outweigh the benefits of having a female caretaker around my brother and me.
One year a new au pair arrived the day I got back from a weeklong campout with my fifth-grade class. It ended with everyone crying about how much they’d miss camp, but then the moment someone got off the bus they’d run straight to their mom to hug her so tight, and it was clear they’d instantly forgotten about their camp life and were now thrilled to come back to the comforts of home. I was the only one who didn’t have a mom waiting at the bus stop, but I still decided to do like the other kids did. I ran to my new au pair—a complete stranger—and hugged her like she was someone I had known my whole life and had missed terribly during this week away from home. I remember actually watching other kids hugging their moms and taking mental notes, as if leaping into a woman’s arms just the right way might make her feel like home and not a stranger. I was acutely aware that the woman I was hugging looked nothing like me, whereas everyone else looked at least a little bit like their mom, but I didn’t mind: I was just happy to have a new woman in my life, even if it was only a gesture at the maternal figure that everyone else had. In a situation like mine you can’t afford to be picky.