Dara and Mira
Life with three very daughters is, to say the least, interesting.
When the kids came home from school yesterday Dara was wearing her volleyball jersey because they had a game last night. I mentioned that I thought it looked a little tight across the chest, even though it seemed to fit everywhere else. She said it was because she was wearing a regular bra instead of a sports bra, and that when she changed later it would look different. A long conversation about bras followed.
About then my husband commented loudly from the kitchen. “I’m not comfortable hearing this conversation.”
The girls just laughed.
“So move to another room,” I suggested.
“Well, I’m making something to eat, so I can’t.”
“You live in a house with four women. You should be used to this,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. You knew this was coming when you brought home two more daughters,” Mira added.
Emma and Mira in younger days
Hand in the air, John strode into the room to set us straight. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just a minute. No one ever mentioned this. No one at the adoption agency, or at the baby house, or anywhere else ever said, ‘Just so you know, before you do this this, if you adopt another little girl, you will be subject to many conversations about bras and sports clothing and boobs.’ Not once, not ever.”
(Emma remarked that no one told us little boys were usually smelly, often sticky, and almost always louder than all three of his sisters combined, but that’s another story.)
After they stopped laughing, Mira went upstairs to shower before the game. But first, she stepped back out of her room for a few moments, wrapped in a towel. Calling on her ten years of softball experience, she coached Dara as she threw grapes upstairs and Mira expertly snatched them out of the air. “No, turn sideways and draw your arm back more. Yeah, that’s it. See how much better that is?” Then they both dissolved into giggles.
Johnny, Emma, Dara, and Mira
At the game later, John got a call from a man who said he had just bought a used iPhone 5, and when he tried to register it, John’s number came up as a contact number. He thought maybe it belonged to us and wondered if he should return it. John explained it had been stolen from Mira three years ago and we had replaced it, and he might as well keep it. He called back a few minutes later, and said he couldn’t register it without her apple i.d. When John said he didn’t have it, the caller asked for her number. He didn’t seem to understand why John didn’t want to give some stranger his teenage daughter’s phone number.
Mira is the team manager for the varsity volleyball team. Dara’s team lost three hard-fought, close sets last night. Before she came out, Mira reminded us not to discuss the game with her sensitive and less battle-hardened sister yet, and suggested we wait for today.
We have a sign on our wall that says, “Our house is just the right mixture of chaos and love.” With three teenagers, it generally tends more toward chaos. Some days the love can be hard to find.
Yesterday was a good day.