Chapter 16

It was almost two hours later that we were once again in the living room. Preceding that, my mother had taught Jessica how to prepare one of my favorite dishes. It was good 'comfort food' and fit this situation to a tee.

"You could have told me," Theresa groused for the umpteenth time.

This time, my father responded, "In all fairness, no, I couldn't."

"Fairness?" she said in shock. "How can you say that?"

"Theresa," he said in a soothing voice, "in my business, I have found, that unless you first address the reason you react to a situation, you can never proceed to a constructive and beneficial outcome."

Theresa looked over to me and said, "You had to grow up with this?"

I gave a half a grin and replied, "He's being nice to you. You should see him when he's upset!"

"John," my father admonished, "you are not helping the situation."

"Oh, but he is," Theresa said. "He's making you seem human."

My mother made a little noise, but stopped herself.

"Now, let's see," my father went on, as though the previous interruption hadn't happened, "the first question is; should John and Jessica get married, when she turns fourteen."

There was a collective gasp of, "What?"

My father held up his hand, stopping the questions that he knew would follow.

"I want to bring that up, so that we can look at the positive and negative aspects of the problem."

"Positive?" Theresa said. "How in the wor..."

"Yes, I'm glad you agree," my father said with a little humor in his voice. "Almost anyone would say that it would be outlandish for a fourteen year old to marry. Of course, they say that now. Many are waiting until they are in their mid thirties to marry. They would probably tell you that it has to do with establishing themselves in life. I think that is a bunch of bull. The real reason? They mature in life with one set pattern, and it takes them that long to find someone that will fit into what they have established. They are looking for someone who will fit their mold. To make matters worse, almost no one realizes they have this mold that they expect someone to fit into. Therefore they find mismatches and guess what? It doesn't work!

"Now to complicate things, people want to equate age with maturity. Age is an easy way to judge someone. To understand maturity, you really need to know that person.

"Let's take Jessica. She's thirteen, and yet she's in ninth grade. How did that happen?"

"I'm smart, I skipped seventh grade," Jessica said with a grin.

From the onset of making dinner, Jessica had begun to relax, a bit.

"If you were really smart, you might have skipped two grades."

"I am. Mom wouldn't let me," Jessica said with a frown.

"Can you imagine? She would have gone from sixth to ninth grade!" Theresa said.

"Having to fend off all those freshmen boys when she was just starting to blossom," my father pressed on.

"Exactly," Theresa replied.

"So what are you getting at?" Jeanie wanted to know.

I wanted to know as well, but couldn't ask.

My father smiled, and said, "There is no question that Jessica is intelligent beyond her years. What you, Theresa, had to struggle with is how mature Jessica is in other areas of her life and how letting one to progress could damage another area that hadn't progressed."

The look on Theresa's face was pure astonishment.

"I couldn't have ever put that into words, like you just did, but that's exactly it." Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Did you understand that?"

"Yes, Mom, not that I agree."

"Good," my father responded, "now tell me why you don't agree."

Jessica looked over to me and said, "How did you ever stand it?"