my milk has a better tan than yours

My Milk Has a Better Tan Than Yours first appeared in the November issue of The Voice.

The day I married Gina I not only became a husband, but also a father. Annica was 7 years old. Up until the wedding day, Annica acted calm. When adults talked to her in their overly emphatic (condescending) voices, asking her about the big day, Annica coolly explained to them that she had already been a flower girl in three weddings.

Annicas will was solid iron, and anyone who opposed her was in for a battle. Tyson, Annicas kindergarten classmate, discovered this the hard way. Tyson and Annica sat next to each other in Mrs. Johnsons class. Tyson loved to get under Annicas skin. One day, after telling on Tyson for stealing her eraser, Annica became discouraged by Mrs. Johnsons lack of action. With her small white fingers wrapped tightly around a No. 2 pencil, Annica took matters into her own hand.

The office called it a stabbing.

Gina says she poked him.

The end result was a two-day suspension from school and a lot more respect for personal space from Tyson, who bore the small mark of Annicas wrath on the middle of his back. Shortly after this, I met Annica for the first time.

One of my earliest memories of Annica was when she hit me in the head with a rock. I looked up from tying my shoe to see a guilty-faced Annica offering, in her best Mark Twain colloquial, "I was just havin a little fun." Many more events like this one ensued, propelling Annica and me into a cold war. If we ate breakfast together, we raced to see who could finish his bowl of oatmeal first. If Annica beat me from my car to their apartment, she informed me that we were actually racing. Our relationship was like this up until Gina and I married.

Our wedding was small. No bridesmaids, best men or ring bearers. Just Pastor Wood, Gina, Annica and I standing in front of 30 or so guests in the mid-summer sun. Annica clung to her mothers side, her two front teeth dug into her bottom lip. For once she looked meek.

Before Gina and I dated, Annica used to daydream out loud about someday having a father around the house. When Gina told me this, I had a hard time believing her. Annica seemed indifferent toward me.

A month after the wedding, I took Annica to the park, hoping that sometime during all our playing we would magically bond as father and daughter. We played on the slide, monkey bars and teeter-totters before ending up on the swings. After swinging for a while, I decided to get off the swings the same way I had since the third grade. I jumped. Annica followed suit and landed face first in the gravel. "You shouldnt do such things in front of little kids!" Annica scolded. Despite my discouragement, we continued to go to the school to play. Our routine never changed we always started on the big toy and ended on the swings. We never had that one moment, but sometimes a famished Annica would ask for a piggyback ride home.

Six months into the marriage, Annica asked me if we could sit down and talk. She was biting her lip and avoiding eye contact. "I was wondering if I could call you Dad. You know like instead of calling you Beau, I would call you dad or daddy." I told her I would be honored.

Most mornings we eat oatmeal.

My dad ate oatmeal.

Thats what dads do.

Due to our excessive stomachaches, we no longer race when we eat.

With one hand, I squeeze the chocolate syrup into my milk. I pass the syrup to Annica. With two hands she squeezes about twice the amount of chocolate into her milk. On her first drink she makes sure milk touches her top lip, creating a chocolate milk mustache. She sets her glass across the table next to mine. "Daddy, my milk has a better tan than yours!"

and the banner over us is love

appeared in the October 2005 issue of The Voice.

She always came in forcefully as if she were exiting a department store on Christmas Eve with lots of bags and boxes.

Sociology usually started a few minutes prior to Gina's grand entrance. Every day I sat in the back of the class and waited with one eye on the door until she burst through it. Gina had to walk by me to take her seat. When she passed, I looked down, pretending to be doing anything besides watching her. Her shoes were red.

Gina wore cardigans and old sweaters held together with safety pins, small silver spacers in her ears and a tiny stud in the side of her nose.

One day Gina sat next to me during a class visit to the computer lab. Throughout the lab, we exchanged small pleasantries. But I hadn't the courage to smile or even look at her face while we talked. Instead, I pretended to be trying to concentrate on the assignment.

Sociology ended, and I didn't have much more contact with Gina than the computer lab incident.
I had no classes with Gina the next quarter. I hardly thought about her until I saw her coming out of cell biology while I was going into one of my math classes. We talked in the hallway each day-so much that I eventually dropped the math class altogether.

At the time I had very lofty ideals, and although my morals and convictions were not grounded in any belief system, I made attempts to live by them. One of those convictions I wrestled with was about the misconception of love.

I defined love as a strong affection for another arising out of narcissism and a necessity to be vindicated by others, such as love from a child to a parent, or a reflection of one's feelings and desire bounced off of someone else and back onto oneself, such as the love of a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I told Gina love wasn't real. She would roll her eyes. I told her that fear was the "invisible hand" that guided us. She laughed. The more we talked, the more I liked her. She was brutally honest with her many shortcomings and the vices she had overcome and was working on overcoming. I had never seen that kind of open honesty.

I fell in love with everything all the time, but never with a woman. Above all, women served as an opiate for most men. Nevertheless, Gina quickly became the object of most of my narrative fiction homework.

Gina was also a Christian. She gave me a copy of "No Compromise: the life story of Keith Green." I read it immediately. Green's relationship with God fascinated me. His wife, Melody, was offended when Keith said that he would not love anyone as much as he loved God, not even her. This statement seemed crazy because not only was Melody a "real person" but also Keith would have to live the rest of his life with her! I had to find out if Jesus Christ was real.

God had never been in my love equation before, and the possibility of God being real gave me a desire to read more. Gina gave me a Bible and a copy of "Mere Christianity." After reading "mere Christianity," I read the book of John. Then Matthew. Romans.

I was thrilled by the truth that life was not about me but about the God who created me.

Gina and I began spending time together away from Big Bend Community College. We went for long walks at night, usually stopping at a swing set behind a little Presbyterian church. The air was crisp. Gina wore a red scarf and put her arm through mine. It was the sweetest gesture.

Soon, we realized that our feelings for one another were growing. But we felt God calling us apart. I saw this isolation as a chance to "prove myself" to God. I was also excited to show my friends that my growing belief in Jesus was not about a girl.

An excitement like I had never had came over me when I pulled out of her driveway for the last time. I thought Christ wanted to teach me what it meant to be alone. Neither Gina nor I had any idea that the six months apart would prepare us for a lifetime together.