Arranged love

dress shopping

Juliet Pov

I wish the road back to the apartment was longer, so I could ponder more about how to explain all of this to Lilly. She is six, so there are limits to how you can explain something like this to someone her age. I mean, she doesn't know what an arranged marriage is. As far as she knows her grandparents fell in love and had a fairytale wedding and then they had me. She doesn't know that they were arranged and learned to tolerate one another along the way. They're best friends, but I wouldn't say that they are in love per se.

Lilly and I live in an apartment on the Upper East Side with four bedrooms, where I turned one into a home office and one into a playroom for her. Since I had her freshman year in college she spent the first part of her life near Harvard with me, before we moved back home here to Manhattan and have had this apartment ever since. Sadly we will have to move now that I'm getting married, according to my mom that was non-negotiable. If it was up to me, we would at least live separate lives whenever we could, but clearly, I don't have much say in any of this.

"Mommy, look I made a drawing of you" Lilly comes running towards me as soon as I walk in the door. The girl sometimes has more energy than I know what to do with. "Wow, that's so pretty," I say as I look at her stick figure drawing of me in a princess dress done in crayons.

Lilly isn't a kid that likes to sit still for long periods, she likes to keep moving and use her creative senses. I think it's good for kids to explore that side of themselves, and their general interests. No kid will hurt from less screen time if you can get them into something else.

I dismiss her nanny Jannet Hammer for the day. It's still summer vacation so she works full time whenever I work. On Monday though, the day after the wedding, my little girl is moving up into first grade and she is thrilled about it.

"How about you help me heat up what Jannet was nice enough to make for us for dinner, and I let you pick desert" I suggest, and she jumps up and down "I want popsicles. The strawberry one with chocolate around it" those have been her favorite recently, and I can't complain as I love them too and they have real fruit in them. The chocolate is the unhealthy part, but occasionally, doesn't hurt. I'm not one of those parents who are overly obsessed with their kid's intake, but I am mindful. I send lunch with her to school, and I try to keep dessert to only a few days a week. Other than that we eat a variety of things.

"You know Mommy, we could have popsicles before dinner" she suggests as she skips to the kitchen, and I follow in tow. "No, no dessert before dinner. You need to eat all your food before you get your dessert" This isn't a new argument; it happens all the time. The girl loves to negotiate, and I find it adorable if she keeps it to the appropriate situations, ergo not around my parents.

She has a drastically different childhood than I had, and that was something I wanted to make sure of from day one. I try to be as present as possible, no matter how busy I am, and I don't confine her to the restrictions I had as a child. Not to mention I have avoided any of my mother's suggestions about etiquette classes and ballroom dancing classes she should take "because she is a Fitzgerald".

During dinner, she tells me about her day, all the fun things she did with Jannet, and what she wants to do with me this weekend. When she gets to talking it's hard to get her to stop, but I don't mind. I love to hear what goes on in that beautiful little mind. I've been told by her pediatrician that she is clever for her age, and to nurture that side of her while also letting her be a kid.

How do you tell your daughter that in two days your life as you know it will be turned on its head? You will be moving into a new place, with a new person you have never met before. Is there even a right way to tell her?