A sticky spring morning, 2011. I’m living with my family in Rusty Water, Kan. My kids will live out their K-12 academic careers out here, I know it. I’m standing in the lunchroom/gymnasium with Mr. Fowler, PE teacher. The grandfatherly man is soon to retire and I’m interviewing him for a feature story to run in the Beaulah Bugle newspaper.
Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten class comes in and my little girl takes her turn jumping rope. My daughter, Kenzie. Headstrong. Irrepressible at home, but self-composed and mannerly at school, if not a bit too independent. She smiles goofily at me once, then ignores me for the rest of the period, her mind in gym class. She’s tough, not given to many gestures of affection.
“This is the best job in the world,” Coach Fowler tells me. “Havin’ all these kids love you.” At just that moment, when the kids head for the door and their general classroom teacher, Mrs. Smith, I go up to Kenzie and say, “Well Kenz, I guess you’re surprised to see me here.” Without saying a word, she gives me the tightest hug. My daughter hugs me.
Roughly the 7 o’clock hour. A Saturday. I open the door a crack and peer into Kenzie’s room with its strobe lighting and wall clustered with pictures reminiscent of Leroy’s dive bar in Northeast Wichita. There’s a star-rushing Avril Lavigne with the sk8tr boi, The Krusty Krab shack, and the California State Flag. A couple of ukuleles on the wall tie the room together.
Lesley Gore singing from my daughter’s perpetually charging iPhone.
You don’t own me
Don’t try to change me in any way
You don’t own me.
Don’t tie me down cuz’ I’d never stay.
“Good morning, pumpkin pie,” I say. I’m standing in the bathroom next to her room. She makes a sound, audible, but indecipherable.
“I’m going to Kayla’s (my girlfriend) for the weekend,” I say. “You wanna come along?”
She declines as I knew she would, preferring to sleep in.
I tell her I’ll, no doubt, write something about my dad, but add that I’ll also write about her, just as I wrote about Sam last year. More awake, she asks what angle I’ll take.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I wanted to write about you turning 18..”
“I turned 18 like five years ago,” she says.
“Eleven months ago.”
“Yeah, see.”
I tell her it will be a “perspective” on the life of a 19-year-old young woman. I remember a magazine doing a profile of Katie Holmes at the end of 19 years. A chronicle of her last day as a teenager. She’s in her 40s now as one day Kenzie will be.
Bob Odenkirk, as lawyer Slippin’ Jimmy McGill on Better Call Saul, summed up the age nicely in a scene where he made this closing argument to the jury: “Oh, to be 19 again! Ladies and gentlemen, do you remember being 19? Let me tell ‘ya, the juices are flowing, the red corpusceles are corpuscle’ing, the grass is green and it’s soft and summer’s gonna last forever.”
This was the episode where he defended the three college honor students charged with cutting the head off a corpse.
Rough start
My then wife, Maria, was 37 weeks along when she went into labor, the evening of Dec. 12, 2004, a Sunday. I drove her to Via Christi St. Joseph Hospital in Wichita. The baby was ready to come out a little early, but that was alright. We had a boy, staying back with his grandparents, and we were excited to now be having a girl.
I used to jokingly refer to Maria’s “child bearing hips.” We had taken a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) class at Wesley Hospital, but we weren’t at St. Joe long before the doctors told us the baby was turned sideways and – like her brother – would have to be delivered by C-section.
Shortly after she was born that night, I could tell that the doctors and nurses were a bit anxious. They told us the baby had extra fluid on her lungs and would have to be taken to the NICU (Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit).
I remember standing in the NICU, with my father-in-law, Rick, looking at the seven-pound infant, hooked up to machines. She had dark hair that would soon turn blond and for a while would have a reddish summer tint to it. With that strawberry blond hair tied up in a ball over her head, she would resemble Pebbles from The Flintstones.
“She looks just like Sis,” Rick said, referring to Maria. He gave me a side hug.
Maria and I gave our daughter what we thought was an original name – Kenzie. Her full name was Makenzie Jo Guy. We thought she might want to use the more professional sounding Makenzie on a resume some day. Jo was an abbreviation of Maria’s grandmother’s middle name – Joyce.
I took PTO from work. Wearing a mask and gloves, having washed my hands to the elbows, I’d sit in a rocking chair in the NICU, holding this pint-sized baby, wrapped in a blanket, tubes and wires attached to her. I’ll be grateful to the healthcare staff of the St. Joe NICU for the rest of my days. There was a well knowledgeable nurse named Rose Ann. Another nurse named Chris. He was kind. As the days were to pass and I watched this child prosper, I thought I’d send pictures of her playing to the NICU staff and say, “Thank you.”
But I never got around to it.
“The nurses say Kenzie has a bit of a temper,” Maria said.
It must have been so. I’d noticed it too. This crying baby with just a trace of irritability. A certain fire in her.
Later, after Kenz had reached the toddler stage, I commented to my mom that both my kids had been cranky babies.
“Yeah, but Kenzie has something a little extra,” Mom said.
“So you noticed that too?”
“Well, yeah, but you gotta’ remember Kenzie had a rough start, coming into this world.”
Early childhood
From ages 3 to around 5, Kenzie would wear her “princess dresses” every day – Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella…She’d wear one dress, get tired of it, go around naked, put on another dress and repeat the cycle.
If you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she’d say, “A princess.” Where did she want to live when she grew up? “A magic castle.” Not just any castle. A magic castle.
So we took Kenzie and Sam to the real life Magic Castle. Disneyland. Rented a car from Avis in Wichita. Drove it to Anaheim, Calif. Maria’s 19-year-old brother, Patrick, tagged along with us. Kenzie got her hair styled at the Bibibity Bobbity Botique and was given a tiara - “princess crown” - to wear.
We lived in Rusty Waters, Kan. (pop. 1,000). Maria worked in the nearby town of Jett as director of a non-profit agency and dropped Kenzie off in the morning to pre-school at the Bible Baptist Church. Kenzie still remembers the teacher’s aide who would call each kid, “Blessing.” Her name was Miss Cathy.
At this time, I was back in college to get a second degree, this one in history/poli sci education. My favorite class that I took was a psychology class – Human Growth & Development. The instructor told us that kids in early childhood ages of 3 and 4 might describe themselves as being able to run faster and jump higher than anyone else. By the middle childhood ages of 7 and 8, a kid will take a more realistic approach, for example, admitting he can’t throw a ball as far as he’d like to. I decided to test this out with The Kenz.
“Kenzie, how would you describe yourself?”
She smiled big and said, “Poopface.”
That was my kids. You could never play Mad Libs with Sam and Kenzie without them using the words, “fart,” “poop” and “testicles” somewhere.
One day I went over to sit by Kenzie at the kitchen table where she was using her crayons on a Max and Ruby coloring book.
I noticed a sticker on one of the coloring books Kenzie had at the table. “Hey, it’s Tinkerbell” (from Peter Pan).
“Stinkerbell,” she said, not lifting her head up, concentrating on her coloring.
“Where did you hear that?” I ask.
“Sam.”
The siblings fought a lot, especially when they were in their car seats in the back of the Hyundai Santa Fe SUV. Kenzie, with her temper, was obvious. Sam, more sneaky.
Yet, the two were best friends. They would skip through the house, holding hands, swinging them back and forth, singing, “Friends forever. Friends forever…”
Adolescence to young adulthood
5:58 p.m. A Saturday. The car radio is playing this old song by TLC. “I don’t want no scrubs. A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me.”
“I like this song,” my daughter says as I drop her offf too work at Braum’s Ice Cream. Her hair sways as she walks toward the glass doors, pinning it up for work.
When the kids’ mother and I split up, I thought my life was over. Living 97.9 miles away. Maria wasn’t letting me see them on the weekends until I showed her the divorce papers and reminded her that the judge had given me visitation rights.
I moved back to my hometown of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the ‘70s) and Kenzie’s mom sent her to live with me. Kenzie loved me, at least at that time. She drew pictures for me. Oh, she still loves me; life has just gotten a little more complicated.
Anyhow, she’d wear black eyeshadow and black lipstick and a black cape. She wore Harry Potter glasses, got her hair styled in a pixie cut and dyed it green. Later, she let the green hair grow long, down her back, and ditched her distinctive glasses for some new frames. She talked at length about dinosaurs –
“T. Rex is my favorite. They survived for about 2.5 million years. There were about 2.5 billion of the species over 127,000 generations.”
And cats –
“People think cats are aloof, but you have to work for their affection. If a cat blinks its eyes at you, it means he trusts you. If a cat rubs against you, he’s putting his scent on you. They’re really kind animals. Can we get a cat?”
I told her continually that we weren’t allowed to have pets in our rental apartment.
Kenzie was introverted and slow to make friends in Jett Middle School. If anyone were to ask her about friends, she’d say, “Dad’s my best friend.” Along the wall of my office at work, I had pictures she’d drawn for me.
She wasn’t an athlete so sports weren’t an outlet. But her mom, myself and some teachers were successful in persuading her to join the Scholar’s Bowl Team. And she did qualify to be in an advanced English class. She even won the middle school’s best short story contest for her writing. I’d like to think those things built her self-confidence up a bit.
Then over the summer of 2019, we moved to Worthington, Kan. (pop. 6,000) where I’d taken a position as editor of the newspaper. I only worked there for a year and a half, then took a job in Wichita,
But I wasn’t going to put my little girl through another move and have her start over again in a new school. She’d been through enough with her parents splitting up, getting moved around and her mom remarrying. I wanted to bring some stability and consistency back to her life so I just commuted to Wichita for work. We have continued living in Worthington to this day.
Kenzie still didn’t socialize a lot during that first school year in Worthington. It didn’t help that COVID came and she was relegated to virtual school during the spring semester, which actually sucked.
But by her sophomore year in high school, she had a group of friends and there were kids at our house all the time. One Saturday afternoon, I took Kenzie and three of her girlfriends to watch a movie in Wichita. There was Kenzie in the passenger seat, her three friends in the back and they kept talking about things, as if in some strange language, and laughing at things I didn’t know were funny. Fifteen and 16-year-old girls.
Kenz still hasn’t learned how to drive. It’s not the worst thing. I have this friend who’s 20-year-old son is two years into the Army and still hasn’t learned to drive. Anyways, I tried once to teach her to drive, but she wouldn’t do it again because I yelled at her. Sorry, but it’s a hell of a serious thing, learning to drive.
We were already two years late when I signed her up for driver’s ed. Then she started saying she didn’t feel good. At first, I accused her of trying to get out of class. Something I think she still hasn’t forgiven me for. Then she couldn’t move one side of her face and I took her to Ascension ER. The doctor said she likely had Bells Palsy.
I wound up taking her two more times to the ER. Finally, the doctor on staff that night suspected Lyme Disease and she was transported by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, spending a week there. She had to drop driver’s ed, but I was just glad she recovered. I was scared there for a while. Her mother and I took turns taking PTO from work and staying with her in the hospital.
The next year I signed her up for Driver’s Ed again. She passed the written portion of class, but not the driving part. She should’ve let me teach her to drive.
She isn’t without trauma in her life. Divorce. Family broken up. Stability shattered. Separations. My problems became her problems. Miscommunication. Misperception.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be miserable every second of your life,” she would say.
Any pain life has caused her, I’d take it on myself in a second.
My kids were always on the honor roll in their first years of school, but after all the family dysfunction it wasn’t so easy. For our own reasons, her mother and I opted to keep Kenzie back a grade in school. She would’ve graduated from high school last year at age 18, but it’ll have to be this year at 19. She’s no longer with the children she started kindergarten with in Rusty Waters so it’s not like she had to watch them graduate ahead of her.
Although her grades haven’t always reflected it, Kenzie is super intelligent. She’s always probing big questions. When she came to live with me six years ago, she was always asking what I thought about things.
“So Dad…what do you think of – abortion?”
“So Dad…what do you think of – racism?”
“So Dad…what do you think of – LGBTQ marriage?”
She challenged me to think hard in giving her the kind of intelligent response she was looking for. I’d give her some answer, then say, “What do you think?”
Nowadays, she’s not as interested in what I think. She has her own worldview, which I would guess is still developing. We don’t always see eye to eye but that’s alright.
I took her to the dentist recently and afterwards, we went to Dairy Queen for lunch before I took her back to school. We were sitting in a booth, eating our favorite, the chicken strip basket.
“Oh shit, I forgot to pray,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“Well, Kayla’s got me praying before meals,” I said. “I think it’s a good idea.”
“I don’t like Christians.”
“I’m a Christian, do you like me?”
“No.”
I remained unfazed.
“There’s something to be said about thanking God for your food," I said.”
She said something about how she's fought depression and suicidal thoughts and God had never been there for her.
“Kenz, He gave you your whole life," I said. "I know it's hard to believe now, but someday you're gonna see God's had your back the whole time.”
“Oh boy. I don’t even have any fucks to give."
“Don’t say that?”
“Why not?”
“Cuz’ you’re talkin – freakin’ blasphemously. (pause) “I don’t understand. You kids were raised in church.”
“Yeah, you raised me in church," she said, raising her voice. "That’s how I know it’s bullshit. Christians are hateful and judgmental people.
"You can't overgeneralize," I said. "You think all Christians are all trumpers and hate gays, but Christians aren’t one monolithic group. There’s thousands of denominations."
“The vast majority –”
"I’m Christian and you know I’d never vote for Trump and I don’t care what consenting adults do in their sex lives, I’m for protecting people’s rights and saving the environment – "
“Yeah, well the ones who say, ‘I’m so woke, I’m not like those other Christians, I’m so progressive” – are the ones I hate the most!”
************
We’ve had some nasty fights, but lately I’ve noticed an easing in our relationship, a sort of detente. I haven’t brought up things I know will make her mad.
“That’s probably why it’s been more peaceful around here lately,” she said.
I would agree with that, but I also have this feeling that she’s been a little more forgiving of me, that she’s accepted her dad isn’t perfect, but that I’m basically a good person.
Her mom was amazed recently when Kenzie and Sam were riding in her car and didn’t fight, but rather sat there like adults.
“I think this is the first time I’ve had you two in a car without a fight,” Maria told the kids.
Kenzie looks up to her brother, respects him. She’s strong-willed, independent-minded, but if anyone can influence her, it’s her brother, Sam. The two remain tight friends.
“There’s trust,” Sam said. “There’s a bond. I think if she were in trouble, I’d be the first person she’d call.”
One of her teachers emailed me and said she knew Kenzie had had a rough time this year, but that lately, she’s gotten her spark back. “She is sweet and has always cracked me up,” the teacher told me. “She is very honest and I love that she isn't afraid to be herself.”
I told Kenzie that I’d read online that her old PE teacher Mr. Fowler passed away last fall. He was 80.
“Well, that’s sad,” she said. “But he was an old man. He was a nice guy, though. He used to forget our names. He’d call us ‘sweetheart’ or ‘sugar.’”
Kenzie (She goes by Makenzie now. Family still calls her by the nickname.) has a little bit of the past in her and a view to the future. She recently had her hair changed back to its natural brown color and got it cut so it stops at her shoulders, giving her an uncanny resemblance to her Grandma Colby in her senior picture, taken many years ago. She also got a tattoo of a spider on her left calf because she likes Spiderman.
“I identify with him ‘cuz he got bit by a spider and changed, and I got bit by a tic and got Lyme Disease,” she said.
When I try to talk to her about her future, she shuts the conversation down. She’s clandestine, but I know thoughts are swirling around in her head. She brings home brochures about Summer Community College and Grossmont Community College. I had to sign a slip, giving permission for her to go with some other seniors from her high school to visit Wichita State University.
Kenzie’s talented at painting, And her grandma Colby taught her to sew when she was a little girl. She sewed a quilt all by herself when she was 9. She says she doesn’t like to read books. “We had to read Beowulf, it was boring,” she said. “We had to read the crappy Canterbury Tales."
But I’ve seen books in her room. It’s just a matter of what she wants to read. She has one book on how to cast Wiccan spells. Oh well, if that’s what she’s into – it’s all cool. Glad she’s reading something.
She turns around to see me sitting in my car, watching her walk away. She strolls back and puts her arms around my neck.
My daughter hugs me.