Fourteen

Today is my daughter's fourteenth birthday. I'd love to withhold the sappiness of saying, "It seems like yesterday that I held her in my arms, her static tufts of golden hair..." but it really does seem like that. The passage of time moves so quickly, and yet I feel blessed to have lived through every moment of it with her. I can still see the roundness of her bright face, the overwhelming smile that had the capacity to melt the heart. She had the most wonderful little voice when she learned how to speak, and if I close my eyes, I can still hear it.

She always loved to sing. I have videos of her from when she was three and four years old singing as though she was having a concert. I don't know how many times the bear went over the mountain before she finally felt like letting him see what he could see, but she would allow no one to tell her when it was time to go forward. "No, Mommy, I will do it!"

Those words, "No, Mommy, I will do it," soon followed questions like, "Do you want me to tie your shoes?" and "Let me pour you a drink." Before long it applied to "Do you want me to dial Grammy's phone number for you?" and "Can I make you some lunch?" Soon it'll be in response to things like, "Do you need a ride to the mall?" and "Do you want me to help you with your homework."

Her independence is liberating and exciting, while it simultaneously pokes me in the ribs with nostalgic despair. One day I hope she'll be a mother herself so she can understand and enjoy the kind of wonder children inspire. Pre-parenthood, we arrogantly think, "Ha! All those years I had to take lesson from them, now it's my turn to teach the lessons." In truth, I have learned more from her in the last fourteen years than I did during the twenty years that preceded her birth. I could be wrong, but I don't think you really understand how to love others unconditionally until you've had children. That compelling madness that forgives every wrong, the strength and ability to look beyond the mistakes and wrongdoings. There have been mothers who loved their children so much as to forgive them for crimes as dark and unforgivable as murder. Only a mother could love so deeply that she sees beyond the fatalist of flaws.

It's like we're blinded by them. By the notion that they once existed inside of us, as a part of us. That there was a time in their life that they were helpless and relied on us to care for them in every way. They don't remember that time in their life, of course, so when you yell at them for trying to roller skate across an icy parking lot, or for divebombing off of the bed and into nothing more than a highly stacked pile of laundry, they think you're insane.

Sometimes I can't believe it's already been fourteen years, but on the inside, I only hope that I am blessed enough to see the next fourteen years of her life, and the next fourteen after that (and the next fourteen after that...)

And for what it's worth, the fact that she still likes to play dress-up at fourteen is one of the most refreshing things in the world:

When Your Mother's Curses Come True...

I am the mother of an almost fourteen year old girl. To date, I have been incredibly proud of the young woman she is growing into. She's an individual. She's artistic. She loves to write poetry. She isn't afraid of what anyone says about her or the choices she makes. Overall, she's a pretty good kid.

Why am I complaining? I'm not, but I will tell you this: she has the worst taste in friends. I blame myself. We sheltered her when she was small. We didn't do play dates. She was the firstborn and only grandchild on both sides of the family until she was ten. She didn't go to daycare until she was four. She had very little interaction with other kids until she headed into school.

Right about that same time she started to play with some of the neighborhood kids. All of them were girls. All were within two years of each other's ages. Now my daughter is a Capricorn, and anyone who either is a Capricorn, or knows a lot of Capricorns can tell you that they are headstrong, powerful, influential and even a bit bossy. No offense. Bossiness can be a great asset. Maybe one day she'll be a world leader. THe thing is, when she would play with other kids that side of her always got overpowered. She felt insecure and unsure of herself around them, so a lot of the time she got bullied.

In first grade she asked to invite her first friend over. This girl was the epitome of nasty. She refused to talk to my daughter for an hour while she was at our home because my daughter didn't want to swing on the swingset anymore. They quickly became BFFs All through elementary school my daughter and this little nightmare were friends. Then we bought a house and moved away the summer before sixth grade. That limited how much time they could spend together and my daughter started to hang out with another girl that was friends with both her and the evil girl.

For her twelfth birthday party my daughter decided to have a big slumber party since she had a much bigger room than in our apartment. She invited 9 girls to the party and 6 of them spent he night afterwards. At three o'clock in the morning I woke up because my daughter was in her bedroom crying over something the evil girl said.

That ended their friendship. This gave her more time to focus on the other girl. For the most part she seemed nice. She was a little shy, but she and my daughter had a lot of musical favorites in common and they both liked to stand out in a crowd. The thing is, this girl was really needy. She liked to try and control my daughter so her focus was always on them. Typical teenage friendship, but this girl has taken a turn for the worse in recent days. She's actually 8 months younger than my daughter and just turned thirteen. She's got a boyfriend that she's been talking about having sex with. She's been smoking pot. Today she was expelled from school for having cigarettes in her backpack.

My daughter wouldn't tell me why the girl was suspended because, and I quote, "You won't let me hang out with her anymore."

Well duh. Seriously, the last thing I want is for her to get involved with a group of people who are making bad choices. She says that she knows about peer pressure and we should trust her, but statistics show what happens to kids who run with bad crowds. Maybe she won't drink and smoke pot herself, but what happens when she gets into a car with one of those morons and they kill her?

Call me paranoid, but this is exactly like one of those curses my mom laid on me when I was sixteen. "You're going to grow up and have a daughter just like you!"

I wasn't an angel, and my daughter is an angel compared to my behavior all those years ago. That is why her dad and I both worked very hard to teach her about life firsthand. On one hand, I don't want to deny her the freedom of learning and making her own mistakes, but on the other, I don't want her to make the same mistakes her friends are making. I don't want her to make the ones we made either.

Kids. I swear.