Sing a Healing Song, Chapter 12

The next week, my dad kept me busy by taking me to every tacky tourist destination in or around Edmonton. We walked around a re-creation of the original Fort Edmonton, we strolled past animatronic dinosaurs in an artificial Jurassic zoo (honest), and we ambled among amazing flowers inside a glass pyramid (again, honest). He even took me to a restaurant called Mavericks that served the best cinnamon buns I have ever tasted in my life.

The last stop was because I had my first “real” period, and I’m super grateful that my dad spotted the signs soon enough to give me something sweet to help me deal.

Not too many girls have a dad willing to go that extra mile, and its even more awesome because he had a son not that long ago.

Of course, he had a sneaky agenda - he wanted me to be too busy for boys, and then he wanted to give me such a high standard for a man that nobody was likely to clear it ...

Then he had to go back to work (In the new reality, he still worked for the Edmonton Eskimos football team instead of giving up his job to take care of me), and my mom took over.

She asked me if there was anything girly I wanted to try, and I said I would love to do a sleepover, but as I didn’t seem to have any close girl friends that was not possible.

So she said “We’ll do it, just you and me.”

And we did, too. She sent Dad to a hotel for the night, we put on PJ’s, watched teen romance movies, painted each other’s toenails, and did each other’s hair.

It was goofy, and hokey, and girly and ... just exactly what I needed.

Afterwards, we had a talk about what I was going to be facing as a senior (and a girl) in a public high school, and I came to understand why she had wanted to give me some positive moments about being a girl before I had to deal with the downside I might experience once I was around other teens, especially other teen girls.

I was tall, athletic, and pretty - to some girls, that meant I was gonna be a threat, and they wouldn’t hesitate to play dirty to keep me from getting the attention of boys. So my mom tried to prepare me as best as she could.

Have I said yet how glad I am that my mom is around yet?

Anyway, having had a bit of silly girly fun wasn’t the only idea my mom had planned. The next Sunday at church, she arranged for Andrew and his mom to join us for brunch afterwards.

I guess you’d call that my first “date”, but it sure didn’t feel like one. I mean, its a little hard to get to know a guy when his mother and your parents are both right there, you know?

Still, I appreciated my mom setting things up that way. As she told me afterwards, “Dating is like a high-wire act. And you needed a net, as you lacked some of the social skills girls pick up by the time they’re your age. So we wanted to be close enough that if it got overwhelming for you, you had us as an out,”

“Learn to swim before heading for the deep end of the pool kinda thing?” I asked.

“Exactly.” Mom said.

I guess both my folks figured I passed the “kiddie pool” stage with that one sort-of-kind-of date, as they told me Friday that after service the next Sunday that they had plans of their own, and of course I let Andrew know I would be ... available.

Okay, so that sounded like I was a pile of free bird seed inside a target crosshairs, but hey, I was still pretty new at this stuff.

Wouldn’t you know it, it actually worked. Just about the time I thought I was going to be left standing around like a robotic stewardess stuck on saying “goodbye”, my knight in shining armor (actually, it was a tux. A very nice tux. A very nice tux that got my heart pumping a little faster) came through and asked if I wanted to join him for a picnic in the river valley.

Edmonton isn’t exactly known for its beauty spots, but if a list was made, the river valley would be at the very top of it. A massive green space has been set aside on either side of the river and extending from one side of the city to the other. Because of the steepness of the valley, I had not been down this way before, but I had seen pictures of the place.

But pictures don’t do it justice ...

The only thing better than the scenery was the company. It was perhaps the most low-stress first date with a guy I could imagine. Andrew had brought a picnic basket with some snacks, and once we had walked far enough he found us a nice picnic table and served me like a waiter, making me giggle and blush in the process.

The one thing I learned was that Andrew had a cousin who was gay and had troubles because of it, which is why he had joined the “affirm” group at the church.

Some girls may like the bad boys, but I found his compassion for his cousin to be rather hot ...

I’ll tell you the same thing I told my dad afterward. There was no funny business. But when I went to bed that night I imagined some funny business possibilities ...