Mid-CenturyModernMoms

Teen Manual

Congratulations! You have a teenager.  Gone are the wonder years of playdough and parent worship; here to stay (seemingly) is a disenchantment with the world that is positively life-sucking for the parent.  How to cope?  Here are a few tactics:

1. Feign deafness.  This bothers your teen when she is trying to ask for something.  And believe me, the only time she'll talk to you is when she is trying to ask for something.
2. Agree with everything she says.  "Yes, dear, I am horrible."  "No, dear, I don't understand."  For the love of God, do not try to reason with said teen.  Therein lies madness.
3. Do not attempt to engage your teen in lighthearted chat.  The withering glare you will receive would make Medusa seem friendly.
4. Try not to hang out with friends whose teens seem to be perfect.  It's too painful.
5. If your teen continues to act particularly unpleasant, leave his/her name and number at the local military recruiter's office.  Remember, absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

Title It Yourself, Baby

I think we have a theme going this week; but, frankly, I am way too buzzed on Snickers and Coke to even care.  Both teens are out this evening at a corn maze event, which means that I can sit around and knit without feeling frumpy.  I can also rummage through all the Halloween candy without having to share.

Not enough people handed out Twix this year.  There was a paucity of Almond Joys, also.  What is this world coming to?

Anna almost didn't go tonight, as there was a last-minute wardrobe crisis.  She tried to pull me into it, but I just looked at her and said, "You look dressed to me."  That was the last I heard of it.  So, why didn't I think of that line 2 years ago? 

Larry and I made Theo get a haircut today.  I could see him thinking, "One more year...just one more year..."  It's rough having people care about how you look.  I swear, that kid will never get his hair cut again once he leaves home.  I've been trying to get him to apply to a military-type academy, just to make sure he visits a barber while he is in college. 

So! How 'bout that election, huh?  I don't know what I will do with my time now that it's all over.  I mean, I don't have to check the news sites and the poll data every hour anymore.  I keep explaining to the teens that normally elections are not this exciting (or amusing).  But, of course, they don't believe me.  After all, old people don't know anything.  It's a wonder we can even manage to survive.

Social Networking

Take one teen daughter who is chomping at the bit to have a Facebook page and one dad who is paranoid enough about the Internet (and with good reason) to make his wife use pseudonyms and omit place names while blogging, and you have a ready-made conflict.  Said wife (that would be, um, me) is somewhere in the middle: I want Anna to learn how to use these social networks safely (i.e., under our guidance) before she leaves home for college so some pervert can't track down our young innocent in her freshman year, lure her somewhere, and kill her.

Not that I worry much or anything...

So, we are at an impasse.  Anna can't use a fake name for facebook - it would defeat the purpose, right?  How much info can you keep private on these social networking sites, and how much do you have to divulge?  How does a parent make sure he/she maintains access to their teen's networking page?  And why am I up at 4 AM thinking about these things?

I would love some answers...

Unexpected

As anyone who has read my posts here or on my blog knows, the last 2 years or so with my teen daughter Anna have not been the best of my life.  It hasn't been fun seeing my affectionate, friendly little girl morph into a hostile, alienated teenager who I could not, by the farthest stretch of my imagination, connect with the daughter I had once known and loved. 

When I would complain about her to friends, they would be quick to reassure me that "she'll come back."  Come back?  I didn't want her back.  I wanted her to go away, far away, so I could stop feeling so miserable every day.  I wouldn't trust her if she did "come back" - who knew when she would turn on me again? 

And then yesterday, at dinner, her littlest sister Susie did this not-so-endearing trick she has of spitting out "yucky" food onto the table between her and Anna.  Understand that, for the past 2 years, an episode of this nature would result in Anna leaving the table in utter disgust and perhaps holing herself up in her bedroom for 24 hours to recover from the experience.  So, reflexively, I winced.   

Imagine my shock when I heard Anna laugh.  Laugh! And then I heard her, still laughing, say, "Oh, that's so gross, stop it, Susie!" in a sweetly cajoling voice - a voice I haven't heard in a long, long time. 

And my heart? You know, the heart hardened by 2 years of teen daughter hostility and anger?  It melted.  Just like that.

Middle Age And Survival of the Fittest

Suburban Correspondent here to say L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu!  It's Rosh Hashanah, which always brings to my mind apples, and honey, and challah (despite the fact that I've married a Catholic).  It also reminds me of sitting next to my father during  the long, long Rosh Hashanah services (I was raised in a Conservative congregation over 30 years ago, which translates to Conservadox now - I swear, I almost passed out with shock a number of years ago when I attended modern Conservative services with a friend and saw women on the bima).

But I digress.  I amused myself during those long services by playing with the fringes of my father's tallis.  I can still feel their silky smoothness slipping through my fingers as I twisted and braided them, I can still smell the mothball smell of the women's winter coats and dresses, I can still hear the mournful chanting of the liturgy.  As I grew older, I was allowed to attend the children's services in another part of the building, which were shorter and which usually culminated in such curious exercises  as deciding what you would do if you were hiding from the Nazis (we Jews are a fun bunch) or playing what I am fond of calling "the lifeboat game" that was so popular in liberal Jewish circles in the 70's. 

Don't remember it?  Sometimes it was set in a lifeboat at sea, other times it was set in a nuclear fallout shelter.  The premise was, there were 10 people in the group but only enough food and water for, say, 4 people to survive.  We each were given roles (or identities) to play (doctor, grandparent, cancer-cure researcher, etc.); and we had to decide who should be deemed worthy enough for survival.

Talk about upbeat, hey?  I'll tell you now, any woman past childbearing age was a goner for sure.  I'm thinking that those childhood lessons may be contributing to my creeping feelings of worthlessness now, in middle age.  Maybe that's irrational, but you'll never find me jumping into a lifeboat already filled with younger people.  I need to better my odds.

Apples, anyone?

Question

You know how on the old cartoons, when a cartoon character runs off a cliff, he doesn't fall - he just keeps running?   And he is perfectly fine, until he looks down and realizes there is nothing whatsoever holding him up?  And then he plummets all the way to the ground, yelling, "Aaaiiieeee!"

That, my friends, is a perfect parable for parenting.  There you are, running along on air for 12 or 13 years, thinking that, so long as you raise those kids "right,"  you are in control.  And then, after all that time of living with this nice cozy illusion, your newly-minted teen makes you, figuratively speaking, look down.  And you realize that you've been living a lie and there are no guarantees.  Not their safety, not your sanity, nothing is really under your control (except maybe the car keys, but you have to hide those really well).

So, it's been 2 years since my Anna turned 13, and I just have one question: at what point do I get to stop yelling, "Aaaiiieeee!"? 

Eureka!

Suburban Correspondent here, puzzling over why now, after 16-plus years of child-rearing, I start feeling as though I look like my mother.  I mean, wouldn't I have seen the resemblance sooner, say, back in the first few years of being a mom?  Why now? 

For a bit, I blamed it on my teen daughter Anna. (I mean, why not?  She blames everything on me.)  According to my theory, it was all because Anna looked at me the way that I remember looking at my mother when I was a teenager - it was her teen Medusa glare that, instead of turning me to stone (which result would at least have the benefit of having fewer wrinkles and better muscle tone), turned me into a replica of my mother.  But then another theory occurred to me - I don't remember what my mother looked like before I turned 13.  My memories of her start there, so now, when my 45-year-old face stares out at me from the mirror, I think, "Mom!" 

So? So, that means I've probably looked like my Mom the whole time.  But only now am I realizing that.  This discovery leaves me with an interesting (well, to me, anyway) conundrum.  Do I feel old at middle-age because my daughter Anna is shooting all these negative vibes at me?  Or do I feel old because I am looking like the person that my teen self thought looked pretty darn ancient at the time?

And, yes, I do spend a lot of time thinking about how I look.  A habit that I started way back when I was 12 is rather difficult to break.

It's Not The End Of The World

I can imagine what it would feel like to be dealing with an unplanned pregnancy as an unmarried teen.  I cannot imagine what it would feel like for my predicament to be on the national airwaves, and on the Internet, and in the papers. I would like everyone in the entire world to please read a blog post that puts a lot of things in proper perspective.  Then, if you like, come back here and discuss.   Three cheers for Mary Alice for pointing out that Bristol Palin's life is not over, it has simply taken a different path; a path which may be more difficult, but which can also yield great rewards.  Three cheers for the Palins for dealing responsibly and maturely with a problem that other people might just try to make go away.  And three cheers for anyone (including that cutie Barak) who realizes that this issue has nothing to do with who should be our next President.

And, if you are wondering just why McCain picked Governor Palin for VP, I think I've figured it out.

Back To School

When I say "back-to-school," I mean back, all the way to last June.  It was then, readers of my regular blog may recall, that my teen daughter Anna pulled off what seemed to be the stupendous feat of completing an entire quarter of Geometry in one week (she's homeschooled) in order to attend the youth group workcamp she had been looking forward to.

"Seemed to be" are the key words here, if you didn't know that already.

We returned home from vacation today to find that she managed to pull a whoppingly low 54 percent for that quarter.  And the people who graded her papers aren't willing to settle for 54 percent (that's what I pay them for, to crack that whip).  So Anna gets to start school a whole week early this year, redoing all those Geometry tests.  I'm dreading it already.

All I can say is, the people in Nebraska understand how we parents of teens can feel at times.  God bless 'em.

Parent Vacation

I just dropped my 14-year-old daughter Anna off for a week of flute camp; and boy, does it feel good.  And I'm sure she is feeling the same way.  I'm just glad she allowed me to stop the car before she jumped out at our destination.  I followed her in and got a glimpse of the sleeping arrangements - 4 girls to a room, 3 or 4 rooms bunched together - and couldn't help exclaiming in dismay, "This is a week-long slumber party!"  To which Anna said, "Yes!" in the happiest voice I've heard from her in almost 2 years.

I'll give her credit - she's earned this week.  It's a local camp, but Anna paid her own babysitting money to be able to board at the teacher's gorgeous house (complete with home movie theater and swimming pool - egads!) with the other girls (I told you she was desperate to get away from us - 300 dollars worth of desperate).  And she even cleaned the bathroom without complaining before she left. I'm sure she'll have a great time, and it's sort of nice for us all to get a break from her unhappy presence.  That's a win-win situation if I ever heard one.

Which makes it hard for me to understand the parents featured in this NY Times article.  I mean, don't they need a break?  Don't they savor the relief of not being responsible for their kids for a couple of weeks?  I'm loving not having to remind Anna about laundry, or chores, or whatever for 7 whole days.  And imagine - no hair product emergencies!  Can life be any easier?  I don't think so. 

So I'm just going to kick back and revel in the unadulterated adoration of my younger kids for the next week or so.  I'll need that rest and relaxation to cope with what we call Anna's re-entry syndrome when she returns home.  Because I can tell you now, it won't be pretty.