We Left Resentment At the Lake

Yesterday, Tallulah and I went for a walk around Lake Merritt. We left at 8am, which apparently is excruciatingly early for a 13-year old person. The day before, she asked me if we could go for a hike. This being remarkable on many levels – not least of which the fact that she can barely tolerate my presence these days – I decided it had to happen. Then, by the time it did, she was just not that into me anymore. Ah, the difference a few short hours can make in the mother-daughter relationship.

I had to coax her with avocado toast and throw in a stop for hot chocolate just to get her out of bed. And before she would peel back the covers, she wanted to know where we were going. I guess she had to weigh the destination against her comfy pillow and warm blankets.  I had been researching places we could go that I wasn't already tired of and that were still open during SIP -- most of the places I thought of were closed.  Then I thought of Lake Merritt, which I've loved on my walks with Susan and would be new to Tallulah.

Perfect! I thought.  Meh, was Tallulah's general response.  Even still, with enough cajoling in the form of avocado, I got her in the car and off we went.

With. No. Aux. Cord. THE HORROR.

She wasn't interested in (a) NPR, (b) the radio or (c) the lone Scottish fiddle CD that's been in my player since fiddle camp last June.  We opted for silence.  Combine a reluctant teenager with an early-for-her morning and no acceptable music, and you get a very quiet car ride.

In my head: Mom's just over her behind the wheel thinking "It's OK...it's time together...it'so OK...it's time together..." and trying hard not to fill the silence just to make herself feel better.

The few sentences Tallulah did speak were on the order of "What is this place, anyway?" and "Are we stopping for hot chocolate first?" and "I said I wanted to go for a HIKE not a WALK."

With such enthusiasm, the morning was bound to be joyful!  Yeah, not so much.  Our walk consisted of me walking slightly slower than I wanted to and still staying two paces ahead of her – probably because she preferred it that way – and me biting my lip when I wanted to point out something pretty or interesting.

I couldn't help myself, after too many steps taken in silence, from pointing out a large collection of ducks and geese, one of which was drinking water.  Drinking water is a laborious process for long-necked waterfowl, as they take a drink and then have to raise their heads up high to let the water shimmy down their throats, gulping several times for what seems like a pretty small amount of water. I called this to Tallulah's attention, but alas, I misspoke:

Me: "Look at that duck drinking water: it's so much work for him!"

Daughter disdain dripping: "That's not a duck."

"Right. Goose. Look at the goose. My apologies."

More silent walking.

Families walked by chatting.  Friends walked by deep in conversation. Couples walked by engrossed in each other.  Joggers ran by all healthy and purposeful.  We plodded on in silence, mom in front, daughter two steps behind.

Around a bend, we encountered a flock of geese, easily twenty or thirty of them.

Me, playfully: "Look at all those ducks!"

Her: Icy stare.

More plodding.

Her, annoyed: "It's so hot out here!  Why did you make me bring a sweatshirt???"

More plodding.

Her, annoyed: "Are we going all the way around this WHOLE lake?"

Me: "Hell no, I've got better things to do than take a morning stroll with resentment."

I'm 99% sure I didn't say this out loud, instead beginning my answer with:

"We can turn right up there and go back along Grand Avenue instead of going all the way around.  I'm sure we'll pass a coffee shop along there too."

So we did.  We cut short the walk, which was only about 40 minutes long at that point, found a cafe and got her a drink.  She opted for raspberry lemonade, what with it being sweltering and all.

While we waited for her drink, I noticed we were right across the street from Children's Fairyland.  This spot is near and dear to my heart, from the countless trips Rick and I made here with our children in the early days of our parenting.  Later, the kids' Kindergarten class made an annual field trip here too, which we chaperoned whenever we could.  So many happy memories.

For some of us at least.  I was jolted out of my nostalgic haze by Tallulah:

"What's Children's Fairyland?"

How was this possible?  How could she not know Fairyland?  Where had we gone wrong that this special place was not firmly fixed in her memory?  Incredulity...shame...parental regret...wondering if her gangly arms and legs would fit inside Mother Hubbard's shoe if we tried to make up for lost time and brought her here now: many things went through my head.  It was so striking to me, I texted Rick.  And then I sat on Grand Avenue, waiting for T's lemonade, soaking up the sun and feeling disappointed in our sad, plodding little walk and in myself for failing to be the same parent for #5 as I had been for #1 and #2 and probably even #3 and maybe even some for #4.  Time goes too damn fast and I don't know how it slipped away from me.

We picked up her drink, and walked on.  The skip in her step returned only when we could see the car, and her escape from the entire tortuous morning seemed finally at hand.

But then on the drive home, lo and behold, the sun that had shone down on all those lake walkers finally emerged in my car.  She actually DID remember Children's Fairyland, Mother Hubbard's shoe specifically, which prompted her to remember other funny things about Kindergarten and childhood and pretty soon, stories were spilling out of her and she was chattering and giggling and lovely. My heart eased. I got the time back.  She even forgot how annoying I was, and did not recoil from the sound of my voice! Victory! Only 15 minutes in the car, but suddenly the sad, plodding little walk was golden and perfect.

And just like that, we left resentment at the lake.


* * *

Teenage Girls Are Awesome: Here's Why

 simpler time: before they were
so confused about me. 

When she was around eleven or twelve, my middle daughter once threw her arms around, pulled me in tight and close, and yelled in my ear, "GET AWAY FROM ME."  There was a beat of silence between us before we cracked up.  We both enjoyed the absurdity of that tortured pre-teen moment.

She’s speeding towards 14 now, and she still does some version of the "push-me-pull-me" dance on a regular basis.  Sometimes, she comes up to me and encircles me with her arms while trying not to touch me.  Or she’ll grab my arm and fling it away.  Repeatedly.  While squawking.  Basically, she’s confused.

I have three daughters, so opportunities for absurdity abound. Today at the 9am Mass, I took a chance with Daughter #1, who is 15: I put my arm around her.  Mothers around the world know what a foolhardy mission this could have been, to open myself up to ninja level rejection and scorn like that.

But lo, a miracle occurred, and she let my arm stay where I had so boldly placed it.  She even snuggled in.  We sat there for a few minutes, listening to what can only be described as an interminable homily, with at least one of us grateful for a few extended moments of closeness.  I reveled in the sweetness, and even believed that maybe she didn’t think I was quite as cringe-worthy as usual.  And then, she raised her head from my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said plainly: "Your presence is irritating me, and I don't know why."  Having spoken her piece, she put her head back on my shoulder.   And again, there was a beat of silence between us before the pew shook with suppressed giggles.

There it was, a simple truth.  We both knew it: she just decided to put it out there.

I remember being a teenage girl.  In between giggles, I told her: "It's OK.  I remember being 15.  I know what that feels like."

But here's where she differs from Teenage Me: she put her head back on my shoulder and left it there.  She felt that mother-daughter confusion, named it, and stayed right there with me anyway.  And like her sister before her, she found humor in that confusion, and let the laughter flow.

The moment lingered.  It felt as if her funny, edgy words had cast a spell over us.  I tried not to breath or move, hoping to stay there with her for as long as possible.

* * *

I was not nearly so gracious about my conflicted feelings towards my own mother, and I certainly could not find humor in them.  I am almost 50, and while I have known for a while that Teenage Me was grossly unfair to my mom, it's only recently that I wonder what that must have been like for her.  I can't ask her: she died this past November.  I can't tell her I'm sorry I was a jerk.  I will never know if she felt the slings and arrows I silently volleyed in her direction when I was 15.  Did she feel me shudder when she pulled her shirt down tight over her hips?  Did she realize that school clothes shopping with her felt like having a disease?  How did I go from falling asleep in her lap to running laps to get away?

I wonder if she ever saw her daughters, my sister and I, wrestling with our Feelings About Mom in the same the way I see my own daughters doing today.  While there are many times I am discouraged by their scorn, or weary from reminding myself that they aren't even human yet and their scathing opinion of me matters not, lately I have started seeing their vitriol, coupled with their need for me, as something else: The Truth about All Relationships.

I am beginning to suspect that the hormonal tsunami that is a teenage girl is the most honest source of truth about love and family.  We love the people we love, and they simultaneously drive us painfully crazy.  We want them, and we want to flee from them, all at once.  We are terrified by and drawn to intimacy.  Teenage girls are just more honest about it than the rest of us.

In those brief, conflicted and funny moments with my daughters, that honesty feels like the greatest gift I have ever been given.

Perhaps it would be wise to be grateful for their confusion and for the way they express it.  Sooner than I can imagine, they will be settled young women who don’t cringe when I touch them and whose eyes have stopped rolling around like pinballs when I speak.  Sooner than I want, the tension and strife will have packed their bags and moved out, leaving echoes of “what if” in their wake.

The tsunami will subside.

The absurdity will be gone.

These too, I will miss one day.

How Adolescents Learn Stuff

An actual conversation in my car yesterday:

Mom, I know how to ride a bicycle down a staircase.

Really?  How'd you learn to do that?

By doing really stupid, not smart, dangerous things.

pause

That's how I learn most of my stuff, actually.

* * *

Sarah-Jayne was right!  This truly is a time of creativity and learning!  Here's hoping he lives long enough to benefit from all that creativity and learning.

* * *

Thank You Linda Wertheimer!

We have two teen boys.  Well, one teen and one almost teen.  Teen culture is rampant around here, complete with flat brimmed baseball hats (ick), bad music, and hip lingo du jour.

Most of the time, I feel like I'm doing battle against pop culture, trying to show my kids the bigger picture, coaxing them away from questionable influences, keeping them aware of other ways of being in the world.

This morning, NPR helped me out.  Of course, the stories on NPR are interesting and go a long way towards educating my kids about what's going on in the world.  But I had no idea NPR could also actually change their behavior!

Today, during the Sunday Puzzle with Will Shortz, Linda Wertheimer was describing to one of the listener-players what he would get for playing the puzzle game, and she referred to the prizes as "NPR swag."

And from the backseat of the minivan, one of the boys piped up:

"I'm never using the word swag again ever."

NPR: making teen culture uncool for 41 years.

Thanks Linda!

* * *

7 Quick Takes: Volume 50

Happy Friday, happy day
Thanks for stopping here to play.

Read a post, or read a few
Won't you leave a comment, too?

Visit our host, the lovely Jen,
Click on some links, now and again.

Here are my 7 Quick Takes.
Thus endeth my turn at being Shakes.

~1~

I am totally prepared for Lent this year: I have created detailed, catalogued lists for my family members of all the ways they can be better people.

What, isn't that the whole point?

OK, OK, so that's not the point. It's a temptation, though, to pick things for my kids to do or to give up. It's pure fantasy to pick things for my husband to do or give up. But really, what I want is to mark the season, give it its due. So I will begin Lent 2012 with a few words from my spiritual mentor:

“To keep united to God through the suffering Humanity of His son–that is the aim of Lent. “— Dorothy Day

Suffering is unpleasant business. It's ugly, difficult, hurtful. Usually, we avoid such stuff. But we do suffer. Everyone does. Listen to the news each day, and you'll find a surfeit of suffering. Watch what happens on the school yard and you'll see some there, too. Consider your family, under your roof or far flung, and I think not one of us can do that without recognizing a painful experience or two or several.

It is around us. There is something about Lent that invites us to sit with the suffering, to acknowledge and maybe even embrace it, to pay attention to what it happening around us and to respond with our humanity. So perhaps the point of giving something up is to get rid of the distractions that keep us from really seeing things around us.

As vague as this is, and even though I'm not entirely sure how this will play out in the next 40 days, my Lenten goal is to weed out the distractions in my life so that I can see the people I love ever more clearly and can respond to them out of greater and greater love.

That's on page 7, highlighted in gold, of the catalogued list I made for the kids, too, right after Do Your Darn Chores The Way You Are Supposed To.

That wasn't a very quick Quick Take. Sorry.

~2~

I can't believe I'm going to admit to this, but here goes. I have posted before about how the latch on my washing machine broke. I even had a cute little quiz about it. I discovered a solution that did not require a repairman to come into my home.

Well, the other day, I decided I was tired of hoisting weights on and off the top of my washer just to make the damn thing run and I finally called a friend of ours who does "fix it" jobs. He's helped us before. He was here for maybe half and hour and charged me a measly $25 bucks, and now my washing machine works without the help of two large coffee table books and two extremely heavy landscaping rocks.

Now for the part I can't quite believe and don't want to face. I just looked up, on my blog, the post in which I wrote about the washer breaking in the first place. It was late May. I have been lifting weights for eight and half months, multiple times a day, just for clean socks and chonies. And all it took was a phone call and $25 to fix it.

When. Will. I. Learn. That 90% of the time, things are much easier than I fear they are going to be?

What have you waited far too long to take care of? Come on: public embarrassment loves company.

~3~

Another confession: I hate Target. I hate shopping at Target. I hate the lights, the smells, the noises, the endcaps, and the shoe department. And I want to know why I feel like the only woman in America who harbors such antipathy.

But I do need to go there today to buy a bunch of stuff. I need a Target mantra to get me through the experience. Any suggestions?

~4~

Two of my daughters got pink eye last week. It was gross. Pink eye has got to be one of the icky-est parenting things ever.

Did I give them the appropriate amount of love and sympathy? I don't think I did.

Here's how I know. I got it this week. And let me tell you, if I had known how utterly miserable pink eye is, I would have been a whole lot nicer to them.

This makes me wonder how many other things they go through that I don't fully empathize with. And it gives me a renewed sense of appreciation for how well they do under icky circumstances. AND it makes me feel like a very large wimp, because I just want to stamp my feet and whine about how unfair it is that I got this stupid ickiness in the first place. They are a lot more mature than I am!

~5~

Baby birdies update: A few days ago, I posted about discovering a hummingbird nest in our garden. Well, after we were gone all day on Monday, my son went out to the backyard to check on the babies, and they were gone. The nest was knocked down on the ground, but completely intact. 

So we are left to wonder. Is it more likely that the birds got big enough to fly, launched themselves out of the nest and knocked it to the ground in the process? Or is it more likely that a cat got to them? The nest did not look roughed up or harmed in any way. The kids were fearing the worst...but then we all used our brains and decided that perhaps this is just the way of nests and birds...because if the nests didn't fall out of the trees after they were no longer needed, there sure would be a lot of empty nests out there. 

Any bird experts out there who might shed some light on this issue for us?

~6~

Nothing makes me feel more like a cliche than parenting a teenager.

Am I really saying things like "You can stay in the band if you keep your grades up" and "This is the time in your life to learn how to do things you don't want to do, so that later on you have more choices about what you can do" and "It's a question of priorities. If you want to be treated like an older kid, you have to act like one, and not like a 6 year old."

Ai-yi-yi. Much as my teenager is trashing about with his newfound teenagerliness, I am kicking and screaming my way into being the parent of a teenager.

When do I get to stop speaking in platitudes?

~7~

Speaking of teenagers, I saw this gem on Facebook a few weeks ago. To this father, whoever you are, I salute you and I thank you and I want to be just like you when I finally grow up into my Big Parent Shoes.

* * *

Thank You, Rock-n-Roll!

When my first born son was a wee tot, probably no more than 1, he tried his first tomato.  It was the first time I ever saw him dislike a taste; up to that point, he was a dream eater.  But that tomato caused a facial response worthy of overcooked brussels sprouts and became the first chapter in a long, depressing story called How A Kid Got Picky.

At the time, I thought: "OK, he doesn't like tomatoes.  No big."  But it turns out, it has been a huge road block in his eating life.  Pizza?  Nope: tomato sauce.  Family spaghetti night? Not with my homemade sauce.  Salads?  Well, sort of fine, if you pick out the toms, which of course, he does.  Salsa? No.  Bruschetta?  Uh-uh.  Most soups?  Fail.

As he has gotten pickier over the years, his not eating tomatoes has gotten more and more frustrating for me.  Pizza is such kid-standard fare that the issue comes up frequently.  Pizza is the meal of choice at most birthday parties, soccer team parties, class parties, always leaving me with "What the heck did he eat?  Chips?  A carrot or two?"

I've tried a million times to get him to try pizza again.  We make pizza for dinner fairly regularly, and he will not eat it.  I've encouraged, cajoled, threatened, bribed, stormed, and reasoned.  I've screamed and yelled.  Over pizza.  I've come unhinged a few times, to be sure, and that's never a good thing.

For a long time now, I have suspected that he would actually love pizza if he just gave it a try.  After all, it's now been over a decade since a tomato passed his lips.  Things change, right?

A couple of years ago and at the end of my rope, I tried a new tactic.  Employing my most practiced nonchalance, I mentioned, offhand, that "someday, I'm sure you'll like pizza."  Since then, every now and then I've asked (using my most crafted casualness): "So, wanna try some pizza this time?  No?  OK, no problem.  Someday you will, I'm sure.  You'll love it."  

In his presence, that zen like confidence prevailed.  But out of eye and ear shot?  I've expressed my true feelings, storming mightily at his monumental stubbornness.  I've obsessed over how he will ever truly enjoy college if he won't eat pizza.  I've wistfully longed for a normal kid, one who inhales pizza like a healthy American teenager. 

It's not that pizza is so great.  Bread, cheese, sauce.  It's not the holy grail of nutrition.  But pizza has become a metaphor, a symbol of his refusal to do something I want him to do, of his epic picky-ness, of the pain-in-the-neck hassle of figuring out how to feed him, of the never ending power struggle that food became at an early age between him and me.  (I learned my lesson.  My other kids are far less picky because I got smart about how to feed them and how to handle food with them.)

So back to the Zen Strategy.  I tried it because I had tried everything else.  I didn't really believe it would work.  The only thing it did was pull the plug on the power struggle, and as much as I wanted him to eat the damn pizza, that was enough for me for awhile.

12 years later, my son has joined a band as a guitarist.  After the first rehearsal, he came home with the bad news: the boys order a pizza at every single practice.  "Well, maybe it's time to try it, then!" was my response.

His?  "Yeah, maybe."

At the end of the second band practice, he called me: "Guess what mom?  I tried pizza.  I loved it."

He even gave me the details about how when the pizza got there, he didn't say a thing, acted like it was no big deal, grabbed a piece and shoved it in his mouth.  I love having that little movie playing in my head.  

Thank you, rock and roll, for giving pizza back to my family, for proving that the zen approach to parenting works every now and then, for teaching me to let go.  Thank you for confirming what I have long suspected but also long resisted: take 97% of what you most worry about when it comes to the kids, and stop worrying.  Fake it till you make it.  Fake it until you figure out that it's really true.  Fake it until what you most want drops into your lap.

I know it's just pizza.  But that pizza is teaching me to be a better mother.

* * *

  

Monday Morning Pop Quiz

In order to get your intellectual and creative juices flowing for the coming week, I've come up with a little quiz.

As the last few posts have shown, teenager-ness is dominating my life right now.  I'm sure (I hope) that by the time my 3rd, 4th, and 5th kids are teenagers, I will be a pro at this, but for now, everything is new and challenging.  I'm definitely still getting my Teenager Legs.  I'm almost at the point where I don't need to run to the starboard side and vomit over the railing every time there is an upheaval.  Almost.

Anyway, I've got Teenager-ness on the brain.  Thus, this quiz.

(1) Finish the following sentence:  "Trying to get a teenager to help with the weekend yard work is like ___________________."  (Bonus points if you include "with a helpful attitude" after the phrase "weekend yard work."

(2) Scenario: Your teen has an evening guitar recital for which he is less than prepared, and he has expressed to you that he really needs to practice because he can't get through his song without mistakes.  He is spending the entire afternoon hiding in his room, playing video games on his iPod Touch rather than practicing.  You should handle this situation by doing which of the following:

(a) Stuff a sock in your mouth to keep yourself from reminding him one more time to practice.  Stifle the urge -- at great cost to your equilibrium -- to obsess over how he is going to feel if he falls apart during the perfomance.  Ignore the rising anxiety and agitation you are feeling until you explode.

(b) Serenely remind yourself that it's his gig, and his responsibility, and that whatever happens will be just fine and wonderful, either a great performance or a learning experience.  It's all good.  Go pick tomatoes while he click-clicks the afternoon away.

(c) Give in.  Remind him.  Scold him.  Badger him. Yell, if need be.  Make the little ingrate practice.

(3) Which of these actions produces the least desirable result:

(a) poking a bear.

(b) waking a teenager.

(c) smashing your car into a telephone poll.

Write your answers on the back of a gift certificate for a full-service afternoon at the Claremont Hotel Spa and send it to me asap.  (Yes, I did take that from the Car Talk guys...although they don't aim high enough...)

* * *

Takes 8, 9 and 10

Yesterday, after posting 7 things I've learned since welcoming my first teenager, I thought of three more!  So, here they are.

~8~

I have learned that when lecturing your teenager on the importance of self-control, it's a good idea to maintain a little yourself.  A tirade about self-control that includes none whatsoever is not effective and worse, makes you look ridiculous.  And a teenager needs no help seeing his parents as ridiculous, so it's best not to give him any fact-based evidence to support that view.

My kids love the story their dad tells them about his Pop Warner football coach, who would come unglued at some player's mis-step, and then scream like a wild animal, with eyes bulging and arms flailing: "COMPOSURE!  COMPOSURE!  KEEP YOUR COMPOSURE!"

I'm learning just how much I do not want to be that coach.  Oh, and also how hard that is.

~9~

I have learned to love the electronics that my kids obsess over so much.  Oh, I still hate the 24-7 access they potentially have to pop culture, YouTube, Snoop Dog, questionable Facebook friends, stupid video games, shopping, and mind-numbing Disney sitcoms.

But I love, cherish, adore the well-placed threat of taking away the almighty iPod Touch if I don't get the behavior I want.  It's magical, what a teenager will do when faced with the prospect of not being able to play his FIFA Soccer 2012 game, or not being able to take a silly picture of his dog, Obama-ize it, and make it his FB profile picture.

Oh, iPod Touch, I am learning to see you as a partner in this adventure called Parenting a Teenager!

~10~

I have learned what a hormone tidal wave-induced melt down looks like from the outside.  Very informative!

* * *

7 Quick Takes, Volume 41: The OMG I HAVE A TEENAGER Edition

It's official.  I have a teenager.  Life has fundamentally shifted.  I am still getting my bearings.  Here are 7 things I've learned so far:

~1~

Do.  Not.  Under any circumstances.  Attempt to fight every battle.  There are just too damn many.  You'll tire yourself out and the enemy will win.  Actually, both of you will lose, because no one wins when everyone is yelling.

~2~

It's true: teenagers live inside a bubble of self-absorption that is nearly impossible to burst.  It would be impressive to behold if watching it didn't feel like an all over body itch on the inside of my skin.

~3~

My teenager really does believe, with all his heart, that I am daft.  Nerdy, daft, pitiable, and so, so clueless.  I do not need to take this personally. I just need to wait a few years, until I suddenly become brilliant again.  (Of course, given that he has four youngsters beneath him charging inevitably towards the Teenage Years themselves, I actually have something like 13 years before none of my offspring think I'm an idiot.)

~4~

All those years I spent thinking I had plenty of time to put clearer boundaries in place, to hone my skills at being consistent and holding the line with detachment and calm?  Poof!  Gone!  Time to step up and show everyone (really, just my kids) what I can do.

It's like every day that has passed since now has been practice.  I got up everyday, I sweat a little, I tried new strategies...

Now, it's game time.  Now is my chance to use all those years of training in the Big Game, with everything on the line.  No more practice drills or simulated game situations: this is the real deal.  Here's hoping all those crunches and sprints did the trick!

~5~

I have also learned that I am a micro-manager.  And being the micro-manager of a teenager is just a recipe for frustration and insanity.  So I am hopefully also learning the art of letting go, of letting the kid make mistakes and letting the chips fall where they may.  And OK, but this is ridiculously hard.

Case in point: Do I hover over him while he is "washing" the dishes so that I can point out, every so helpfully, that while the top of that dish is basically clean the bottom is covered in grease and therefore cannot actually be placed in the dish drainer just yet?  Do I stop him after every dish that needs to be re-washed?  Or do I just let him know that anything not clean will have to be re-done, and then walk away like a Zen Maiden?  Let him sink or swim on his own?

If I stand there and micromanage, he usually goes from calm to MY MOTHER IS DRIVING ME CRAZY in 0.5 seconds and the whole thing becomes a soul-killing power struggle.  If I do the detached thing, I end up with more work.  It takes time to track him down, disentangle him from his headphones, and cajole him back to the sink. It's hard enough to get him there once, let alone to make him re-do the job hours later.  

Last night at dinner time, I pulled five plates out of my cabinet that were greasy, gritty, and grimy.  I was displeased.  He was not home.  I could not make him re-do them at that moment, and I didn't want them on my counter top.  I washed them.  I suck.  In Big Game parlance, I gave the ball away to the other team.

~6~

Teenagers don't like it when you stare wistfully at them.  The day my son turned 13, I realized that this birthday was a huge milestone for both of us.  The previous 13 years had passed in the blink of an eye. From the day he was born, he has been growing up and away from us, but now that movement to somewhere else will be the central theme of his life.  It's what we are charged with helping him to do, now more than ever.  So that day, I wanted to grab him and stuff him back down to toddler size, so I could have him for longer and so I could go back and do everything better.  In lieu of that, I just wanted to look at him.  I found myself fighting the urge to gaze at him in the exact same way I had 13 years ago, when he was an uncommonly alert infant, gazing back at me with calm intensity.  

We stare at our babies, don't we?  We spend hours just looking, wondering who they are, who they will be.  We stare in awe at their beauty, their perfection and their potential.  We are humbled by their presence and the awesome responsibility they confer upon us.  We are filled with a love so powerful and unexpected that we can't express it in words, we can just feel it, let it wash over us, and hope we rise to the level of deserving it.

The day my son turned 13, I felt all those instincts more powerfully than I have in years.  And I just wanted to look at him.  I wanted to stare, the way I would at an awesome mountain range or a powerful waterfall.

But that would have just freaked him out, so I had to content myself with sneaking quick glances and acting all cool and collected.  Freaking out your teenager is a no-no.

~7~

And the number one thing I've learned from having a teenager is the same lesson I've been trying to learn since I became a mom:  Be hopeful.  Be curious.  Be detached.  Be strong.  And find your sense of humor because there is nothing you need more than laughter when raising children.

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Please visit Jen at Conversion Diary for the original 7 Quick Takes and please visit the links to other people participating this week.  And comment!  Comments are like candy to us bloggers!  We love them!  :)

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10/15/11 Update: I thought of three more!  And posted them here.

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