Outing With Daughter Quotes

What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in this case for peer connection. Peer contact whets the appetite without nourishing. It titillates without satisfying. The end result of peer contact is usually an urgent desire for more. The more the child gets, the more he craves. The mother of an eight-year-old girl mused, “I don't get it — the more time my daughter spends with her friends, the more demanding she becomes to get together with them. How much time does she really need for social interaction, anyway?” Likewise, the parents of a young adolescent complained that “as soon as our son comes home from camp, he gets on the phone right away to call the kids he's just been with. Yet it's the family he hasn't seen for two weeks.” The obsession with peer contact is always worse after exposure to peers, whether it is at school or in playtimes, sleepovers, class retreats, outings, or camps. If peer contact satiated, times of peer interaction would lead automatically to increased self-generated play, creative solitude, or individual reflection. Many parents confuse this insatiable behavior with a valid need for peer interaction. Over and over I hear some variation of “but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him.” Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what so clearly fuels the obsession. The only attachment that children truly need is the kind that nurtures and satisfies them and can bring them to rest. The more demanding the child is, the more he is indicating a runaway obsession. It is not strength that the child manifests but the desperation of a hunger that only increases with more peer contact.

We do eventually get dressed and look for food, although we only make it to the dining room in time for lunch. Egeria accepts her ousting as Alpha Sinta without a hint of anger or regret. Clearly, it’s what she was expecting all along. Piers is away on a recruitment trip, but the rest of the family is here and overjoyed by our wedding announcement. Jocasta decrees that we have to go shopping, now, and Kaia bounces in her seat, beyond excited about any outing that will actually get her on the other side of the castle gate. Shopping requires money, so I dig around in Griffin’s pocket under the table, letting my fingers wander enough for him to nearly choke on his stew. I find four gold coins and hold on to them. “You never pay me.” He looks aghast. “I can’t pay you anymore.” “We’re about to get married. No one’s going to confuse me with a prostitute.” Kaia spits out a grape. It bounces across the table and then lands in her mother’s lap. Kaia slaps her hand over her mouth, her blue-gray eyes huge, and Nerissa gives her a quelling look. The look finishes on me, and I might have felt a little quelled myself if Carver hadn’t suddenly made a noise like a donkey, finally belting out the laugh he’d been holding back. Anatole bangs his hand down on the table and bursts out laughing. He sounds like a donkey, too. It’s contagious, and the whole table erupts, snorting and braying until most of us are wiping tears from our eyes. I shake my head, grinning. I haven’t laughed like this in…well, ever. Nerissa eventually gets up, comes over to me, and then kisses my cheek, something that would usually make me squirm. Today, it somehow feels normal. “I always wanted to have four daughters.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Now I do.” I keep smiling like a loon even though my throat suddenly feels thick, and heat stings the backs of my eyes. I have a family that loves me. I would protect them with my life. Well, maybe not Piers, but I have a feeling he would return the sentiment

What is involved in appearing to court me?” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t been courted before? What about the climbing cits and baronets’ sons? They never came up to scratch?” “Many of them did.” She wondered what he’d look like if somebody were to shave off those piratical eyebrows. “They did not bother much with the other part of the business.” “The wooing?” “The nonsense.” “We need the nonsense,” he said. “We need to drive out at the fashionable hour; we need to be seen arm in arm at the social events. I need to call upon you at the proper times with flowers in hand, to spend time with your menfolk when I creditably can. I’ll carry your purchases when you go shopping and be heard begging you to save your waltzes for me.” “There’s a problem,” she said, curiously disappointed to see the flaw in his clever scheme. He was a wonderful dancer; that was just plain fact. And she loved flowers, and loved the greenery and fresh air of Hyde Park. She also liked to shop but generally contented herself with the occasional minor outing with her sisters. And to hear him begging for her waltzes… “What sort of problem can there possibly be? Couples are expected to court in spring. It’s the whole purpose behind the Season.” “If you court me like that, Their Graces will get wind of it. They very likely already know you’ve called on me.” “And this is a problem how?” He wasn’t a patient man, or one apparently plagued with meddlesome parents. “They will start, Mr. Hazlit. They will get their hopes up. They will sigh and hint and quiz my siblings, all in hopes that you will take me off their hands.” “Then they will be disappointed. Parents expect to be disappointed. My sister was a governess, and she has explained this to me.” He looked like he was winding up for a lecture before the Royal Society, so she put a hand on his arm. “I do not like to disappoint Their Graces,” she said quietly. “They have suffered much at the hands of their children.” He blinked at her, his lips pursing as if her sentiments were incomprehensible. “I won’t declare for you,” he said. “If they let their hopes be raised by a few silly gestures, then that is their problem. You have many siblings. Let them fret over the others.” “It isn’t like that.” She cocked her head to study him. Hadn’t he had any parents at all? “I could have seventeen siblings, and Their Graces would still worry about me. You mentioned having sisters. Do you worry less about the one than the other?” “I do not.” He didn’t seem at all pleased with this example. “I worry about them both, incessantly. Excessively, to hear them tell it, but they have no regard for my feelings, else they’d write more than just chatty little…” “Yes?” “Never mind.” Some

Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms. “He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.” Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality. “Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.” “Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.” Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.” She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room. “None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.” He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness. Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving. “Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.” The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively. Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby. “This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.” “Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.” The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them. “He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.” Vim put his free arm around her, hating the misery in her tone. “He has a runny nose, Sophie. Nobody died of a runny nose.” Her expression went from wan to stricken. “He could die?” She scooted away from Vim. “This is what people mean when they say somebody took a chill, isn’t it? It starts with congestion, then a fever, then he becomes weak and delirious…” “He’s not weak or delirious, Sophie. Calm down.

Ronalda looked at me as though she couldn’t imagine an unspecial mother-daughter outing. It was like I had told her that I had money, but not the kind you could spend.

That same summer another hunt was arranged for four special guests: his sisters May and Helen and General Augur's two daughters. Twenty-nine years later, in her book Last of the Great Scouts, Helen Cody Wetmore told the story of the hunt. "A gay party it was," she wrote. "For men, there were a number of officers ... and Dr. Frank Powell ... for women, the wives of two of the officers, the daughters of General Augur, May, and myself." Buffalo Bill was away from the post at the time and was unaware of the outing that had been planned.

It wasn’t dignified in the least, the way the grown man crouching on the floor played with the child—made a fool of himself to entertain a stranger’s abandoned baby. Not dignified, but it was… oddly endearing. Sophie felt an urge to get up and put some distance between herself and this tomfoolery on the floor, and yet she had to wonder too: if she brushed a lock of her hair over the child’s nose, would the baby take as much delight in it? She sat back. “How is it you know so much about babies?” “My half sisters are a great deal younger than my brother and I. We more or less raised them, and this is part of the drill. He’ll likely nap next, as outings tend to tire them when they’re this young.” He crouched low over the child and used his mouth to make a rude noise on the baby’s belly. The child exploded with glee, grabbing wildly for Mr. Charpentier’s hair and managing to catch his nose. It was quite a handsome nose in the middle of quite a handsome face. She’d noticed this at the coaching inn, in that first instant when he’d offered to help. She’d turned to find the source of the lovely, calm voice and found herself looking up into a face that put elegant masculine bones to the best possible use. His eyes were just the start of it—a true pale blue that suggested Norse ancestry, set under arching blond brows. It was a lean face, with a strong jaw and well-defined chin—Sophie could not abide a weak chin nor the artifices of facial hair men sported to cover one up. But none of that, not even the nose and chin and eyes combined, prepared Sophie for the visceral impact of more than six feet of Wilhelm Charpentier crouched on the floor, entertaining a baby. He smiled at the child as if one small package of humanity merited all the grace and benevolence a human heart could express. He beamed at the child, looked straight into the baby’s eyes, and communicated bottomless approval and affection without saying a word. It was… daunting. It was undignified, and yet Sophie sensed there was a kind of wisdom in the man’s handling of the baby she herself would lack. “He’ll

May we go home now?” The sparkle had left her eyes; the roses in her cheeks had faded. The woman looked positively mulish. “You have the reins. We go where you please.” She turned the horses off the main path, leaving Hazlit to wonder what exactly had blighted their outing. Had it been Deene’s flirting? The sight of Her Grace? Or worse, something he himself had said or done? ***

When I need a reminder of this I think of a story. It is about a man whose three-year-old daughter died. In his grief he put together a video of her short little life. But as he went through all of his home videos he realized something was missing. He had taken video of every outing they had gone on and every trip they had taken. He had lots of footage—that wasn’t the problem. But then he realized that while he had plenty of footage of the places they had gone—the sights they had seen, the views they had enjoyed, the meals they had eaten, and the landmarks they had visited—he had almost no close-up footage of his daughter herself. He had been so busy recording the surroundings he had failed to record what was essential.

That wasn’t very nice. Freddie didn’t even get a chance to say his farewells.” “Didn’t he? I thought he did that while quite improperly asking you to spend Sunday afternoon with him while you were in the company of another gentleman.” “For goodness sake, Blackmoor, I don’t know why it bothers you so much. After all, it’s not as though you and I are actually on an outing.” He turned a surprised look on her and waved a hand to indicate their surroundings. “No? How is this not an outing?” “You know very well what I mean. Certainly we are on an outing. But not in the way that most of these other couples are ‘on an outing.’ There, look there.” She pointed to a couple walking toward them on the other side of the Row, the eldest son of the Marquess of Budleigh and the youngest daughter of the Earl of Exeter. The young woman was looking at her companion with a look of starry-eyed adoration, and he appeared to be returning her attentions. “They are courting and, to look at them, they might well be the first match of the season. A good one, too,” she added, distracted for a moment by the twosome. He spoke, shaking her from her reverie. “How does this relate to Stanhope’s impropriety?” “There was nothing improper about Stanhope’s behavior, and you know it. You and I look nothing like those two. And everyone who sees us—especially Stanhope, who has been friends with us both for years—knows we’re just out for a ride. Not out for a ride.” He looked at her, shaking his head in confusion. “Women truly are strange and unknowable creatures.” She

Aside from the occasional golf outing, contributions Trump had made to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s Senate campaign coffers, and the Clintons’ attendance at his third wedding, Trump and Bill weren’t particularly close. Their daughters, Chelsea and Ivanka, had developed a relationship over the years of running in the same Manhattan circles, but there was no reason for Trump to call Bill, except to hear what the sage of the Democratic Party had to say. Bill was in the habit of dispensing political analysis to anyone who asked.