The Boy Whisperer

They find a quiet corner, these two, amid the cacophony of a giant pizza party. The school’s annual trip to Kalahari Water Park Resort, and the youngsters have finally dried off and are waiting for the pizza to cook. Four families, eleven kids, and five giant sheet pizzas, and it is definitely difficult to find a quiet nook.

I glance in her direction: my daughter with her long brown hair and hazel eyes, the tallest girl in her grade. She has left her girlfriends in the other room and is sitting cross-legged in front of the fire. And knee to knee with a boy in her class. My breath catches. Just for an instant I flash ahead five years. Or ten.

She is such a beauty. Despite my bias and a mother’s rose-colored glasses, I know this to be true. I am in for it, I know, for a young adulthood of boys and crushes and drama. I can see it here already. Her long tresses and tiny mouth, her eyes wrinkling just so at whatever he is saying. I am too far away to tell. He looks at her. She can’t help but return the gaze. And they sit for a while as if no one else is there.

I ask her later, what was there to say? They were talking about deer, she tells me. He is an avid hunter, a family trait and pastime. At eight years old, already killing creatures for sport. The art of the deer hunt is his best.

It makes her sad, to know this about her friend. He is the twin brother of one of her besties. She has known this hunting story for some time. And by the fire, she tells him how she loves deer. They come to her back yard, she explains. She watches them with her grandmother. And her little brother. She picked her bedroom for them, looked beyond the biggest room in the new house to choose the one with the view, perched above the back yard so she could always watch the deer.

I didn’t know this story at the time, but I saw how seriously they talked. And I didn’t know that her words would have such power. (Really, how could I not? She can move mountains with those words. And the passion in her voice.)

Later, the twin sister said “He likes you,” so like the boy/girl dramas of my past. But now this is MY little girl and her friends and stories. I can picture her smile light up and her cheeks grow red.

“So DO you like him?” I say to her that night, as we snuggle on the couch and recount the day’s events.

“Moo—mmm,” she rolls her eyes like only she can and says “He is my friend.”

Then she grins at me and her eyes sparkle as she says, “ AND, he told me that from now on he would only hunt for rabbits.”

Not quite sure how to take this, I didn’t know this would start so soon. But she is a girl who speaks her mind and is willing to go out on a limb. And already people are listening to her quiet intensity.