Butt-dialing

The strangest thing happened tonight.  I was getting ready to go out for dinner with my neighbour when the phone rang.  Recognizing my daughter’s cell phone number on the call display, I picked it up and said “Hello honey”.  Within a few seconds it was clear to me that she had inadvertently speed dialed me (butt-dialed is the term I’ve heard used for these mistakenly placed calls) and was not aware that I was on the line.  I tried several times to shout loudly enough that she’d hear me but she was in a noisy restaurant with her girlfriends.  I was about to hang up when I heard her say something about her mother.   Now I’m sure that there would be those who’d call this an ethical dilemma, but I, on the other hand, felt no compunction whatsoever about listening in on the conversation.  It was not after all as though I had bugged her backpack or something. SHE called ME!  So I put the phone on speaker, laid it down on the bathroom vanity and continued putting on my makeup.

I heard her tell her friends that her mother married her stepfather because she wanted a man who didn’t fight.  Her father, she explained, had been a fighter, and her mother wanted a calm easy going guy this time around.  I heard her tell her friends how her step-siblings had given her a rough time.  Her step-brother (before he actually even was her step-brother) had told her when she was six that she was fatter than he was, even though he was a boy and he was nine.  Her step-sister, she went on to say, had recognized this as my daughter’s vulnerable spot, and continued to comment on my daughter’s shape regularly over the years.  I heard my daughter tell her friends that her step-sister picked the most opportune moments to reveal my daughter’s quirky habits (like her loud gargling in the mornings) so as  to maximize the humiliation factor.  This might not sound like much to us, as adults, but trust me when you’re 14 or 15, and your older step-sister reveals embarrassing things about you in front of her friends, it is a pretty big deal.

I heard one of the girls with my daughter ask “Didn’t your mother defend you?”, and I heard my daughter say “No... nobody defended me”, and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach.  It’s true.  There were times when I told her to toughen up.  I thought she just needed to grow thicker skin because she’d been an only child and needed to get used to those sibling combats that we all went through as kids- like kittens and puppies who playfully practice their hunting skills on each other before having to fend for themselves in the big harsh world.  It’s true I generally thought she was overly-sensitive and needed to learn how to give it back as good as she got it.  I thought this was a good life skill that had to be developed without parental involvement. 

So here’s the incredible irony:  when my marriage ended, my husband told me that I’d incited my daughter against his children and him.  He said that I fanned the flames and encouraged resentment on her part.  I have agonized since then, wondering whether there could possibly be truth in that.  Now... fast forward a year and I am hearing my daughter tell her friends things her stepsiblings said and did, that I was not even aware of.  I am hearing her say that she felt defenceless against them and that her mother did not intervene, and her step-father did not call his children on their hurtful words.  That’s a far cry from fanning the flames.  It made me want to phone my ex and tell him “You’ve got that wrong!  I didn’t need to incite my daughter’s resentment against you and your kids- you took care of that all by yourselves.”

Eventually I had to hang up because I had only minutes left to meet my neighbour outside a nearby restaurant, so I may never know what other painful stories my daughter shared with her friends; but it made me remember that there are unintended casualties when a marriage ends.  The collateral damage has yet to be fully revealed.  What will my daughter’s relationships with men be like? Will she begin every relationship expecting for it to end, bracing for the inevitable break-up based on her mother’s experience?  Will she have a relationship with food that is rooted in comments made for  a decade by her step-siblings?  I really hope I haven’t screwed up.  All this time I’ve been thinking that being a parent was the one thing I excelled at.  Please God don’t let me wrong!

P.S.  Yes, I have my daughter’s permission to post this blog entry... and yes we’ve talked about the content of the conversation I overheard.