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This weekend I was faced with the inevitable. My daughter, 15, spent three days conspiring with her friends to figure out a way to stay at a boy's house, with his parents absent, and hang out and drink until five in the morning. When caught, she explained that she didn't call because she knew I wouldn't let her do what she did but she wanted to do it anyway. The whole incident made me feel cheated somehow. Cheated of my little girl who used to be, cheated of the delusion that I didn't need to intensely keep track of my kid's every movement, cheated of my hope that somehow my kid would be different, special. Mostly I was cheated of thinking I wasn't the same dupe my parents were when I was that age out running around, doing stuff I shouldn't, and keeping it a secret.
My daughter told me three different sets of lies, all in one car ride while returning from the co-conspirator friend's house to mine. First she said she got there pretty much by accident. Then she said it was planned. Then she admitted they'd been drinking. Then it came out that she'd done this before and had planned the thing for multiple days in a row.
We fool ourselves. That child you hold in your hands, all 7 or 8 or 6, whatever pounds, when born is the single greatest miracle you will ever be invited to witness. However, because that child's existence is such a miracle, we allow ourselves to believe that she will always be so. She will not. She is not. She's a kid, a fifteen year-old kid, like most every other fifteen year-old kid, who wants to date and party and drink and do all the stupid stuff everyone else does when they are stupid fifteen year-old kids. Not special. Not miraculous. Just another kid who makes it possible for trigonometry teachers to grow bored with their students, makes it possible for statistians to provide the most illuminating incites into our kids behaviors, makes it possible for parents to experience a sense of relief as well as a sense of loss when that same child, three years later, toodles off to university. Is this just another rite of passage for me? Am I to go through this with all three of my kids? Probably, in answer to both questions.
Yet, we all live separate and distinct lives. My children don't look like yours. Each has their own way of manipulating their mouths around different words, pushing out the air and making sounds distinct to them. Some of mine mimic my mannerisms. Some my speech patterns, but even those with similar mannerisms and patterns are distinctly themselves. They cry at different things. One at frustration, another and unfairness, another at anger. They seem special........... but they aren't. Statisically, they will get in similar types of scrapes. They will disappoint me with similar lies. The will manipulate me with similar desires to do what they all similarly want to do.
What do I lament here? The loss of the last vestige of my own specialness? Probably, but wow, I really thought, holding that first child, with the stickiness of birth coating her skin and her long, elegant fingers thrumming the air for the first time in that delivery room, that this was the beginning of pure newness. But I was wrong.
My daughter told me three different sets of lies, all in one car ride while returning from the co-conspirator friend's house to mine. First she said she got there pretty much by accident. Then she said it was planned. Then she admitted they'd been drinking. Then it came out that she'd done this before and had planned the thing for multiple days in a row.
We fool ourselves. That child you hold in your hands, all 7 or 8 or 6, whatever pounds, when born is the single greatest miracle you will ever be invited to witness. However, because that child's existence is such a miracle, we allow ourselves to believe that she will always be so. She will not. She is not. She's a kid, a fifteen year-old kid, like most every other fifteen year-old kid, who wants to date and party and drink and do all the stupid stuff everyone else does when they are stupid fifteen year-old kids. Not special. Not miraculous. Just another kid who makes it possible for trigonometry teachers to grow bored with their students, makes it possible for statistians to provide the most illuminating incites into our kids behaviors, makes it possible for parents to experience a sense of relief as well as a sense of loss when that same child, three years later, toodles off to university. Is this just another rite of passage for me? Am I to go through this with all three of my kids? Probably, in answer to both questions.
Yet, we all live separate and distinct lives. My children don't look like yours. Each has their own way of manipulating their mouths around different words, pushing out the air and making sounds distinct to them. Some of mine mimic my mannerisms. Some my speech patterns, but even those with similar mannerisms and patterns are distinctly themselves. They cry at different things. One at frustration, another and unfairness, another at anger. They seem special........... but they aren't. Statisically, they will get in similar types of scrapes. They will disappoint me with similar lies. The will manipulate me with similar desires to do what they all similarly want to do.
What do I lament here? The loss of the last vestige of my own specialness? Probably, but wow, I really thought, holding that first child, with the stickiness of birth coating her skin and her long, elegant fingers thrumming the air for the first time in that delivery room, that this was the beginning of pure newness. But I was wrong.
Labels: lying, parenting, underage drinking
posted by milesjason03 at 5:46 PM
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