Advice to a College-Bound Daughter
Betsy Joseph
November 2, 2025
My father, generally a man of many words,
stayed mostly silent while driving north on the interstate
to settle both my belongings and me in my college dorm.
Perhaps his thoughts lingered on his own college migration
over thirty years earlier from a cultural and physical landscape
that no longer served him.
I used the quiet to contemplate my own imagined impressions
of the place I would spend the next four years.
The radio turned low, we bumped our way
through several miles of road work, detours,
listening to the tires spinning down the highway,
getting us closer to our destination.
At last my father broke his silence by clearing his throat.
He glanced sideways at me, then turned his eyes
back to the traffic just ahead.
I angled my face and looked at his profile,
struck by a nervousness that squared his jaw
and tensed his hands at the wheel.
I heard a deep inhalation first,
followed by a tumble of words in the exhalation,
an almost strangled “Honey, I want you to know . . .”
“Know what?”
I wanted to help him, or I thought I did.
“Well, please hear me out. This isn’t easy to say.”
“Ok.” I stared ahead and waited for him to find his words.
“Honey,” clearing his voice again,
“Honey, there are two kinds of girls.”
Then his voice trailed.
“Two kinds of girls . . .” I prompted.
“There are the girls that guys want to get experience with
and there are the girls guys want to respect.”
“And the point of this conversation?” I countered,
no doubt a bit sharply.
“The point,” he continued, “is this”:
“Which kind of girl do you want to be?”
I don’t know if I hated him at that moment
or whether I admired him.
I felt the blood rushing to my face,
hot and embarrassing.
I also considered the courage he had summoned
from within to broach this sensitive topic
with his eighteen-year-old daughter.
I realized fairly quickly that he didn’t expect an answer,
nor did I offer one.
He wanted me to ponder his words,
to put weight into a father’s caution,
a father’s notion of reputation.
Which led me to wonder if his words sprang
from parental responsibility or from territorial concern
for his youngest child and only daughter.
An awkwardness prevailed until we parked
and unloaded all my gear.
Carrying the loads up three flights of stairs
winded us both and left little air for talk.
He noticed various girls in the hallways
dressed less modestly than I
and simply shook his head as only
a befuddled father can, and for the first time
I saw my dad in a different light.
Whereas I had always perceived his confidence,
his signs and show of strength,
I now saw the slackness of vulnerability
in his posture and in his dark brown eyes.
I think he saw time, distance encroaching
and didn’t feel prepared to let go quite yet.
Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and, most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron.
