Young love


 A couple weeks ago my 16-year-old daughter proposed her birthday present to me: to have her boyfriend over for dinner.

Now, you may scoff "what a self-centered teenage thing to do," but consider the backstory....I had been encouraging her for months to have this fella over more. They had been dating for at least five months (though there was some passionate first love drama a couple years back) and she was always going to his house to hang with his family and watch movies. They were obviously the chosen ones. I was the stepmother.

Seriously though, I had myself believing "doesn't every teenager want to have their significant other over all the time to hang out with their parents?"

HellaNO!

But for whatever reason, this she did. This was the second time the young man with the deep voice and swagger had been to our house (at least that I know of), and while a boyfriend of few words, he was polite and treated my daughter with respect and answered my allowed three questions:

Are you planning on going back to school? 
What are you interested in studying? 
Do you still think about playing baseball? 

"Yes." 
"I have no idea really."
"Actually maybe..."

He was obliging. She was highly annoyed.

Still, they ate the pizza I had picked up along with the salad her Dad had made. We made small talk and then they went back to her room (yes we even let her close the door now though she doesn't see the point since her bedroom is off the kitchen and we can "hear everything." Reverse psychology? Perhaps).

Still, it was a lovely birthday present for me, the Mom who just wants to be loved. To be cool. The Mom with the house where all the kids like to hang out and watch movies and eat popcorn; the one they want to share their problems with and cry with when their home life isn't working out...or not.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I have to let my kids live their own lives. Now almost 20 and 17, I'm happy my kids are independent. If I embarrass them, score for me! My job is not to have them like me but to provide them with direction and self-sufficiency skills -- right? Right?

My wish for my kids used to be "if they are happy and can support themselves that is all I wish for."

Today a friend told me his cousin once told him, "If my kids don't go to prison then I will have succeeded as a parent."

I'd like to think my bar is a little higher than that, but if my birthday present is to hang out with my kid and the boy she loves so be it.

Maybe next year they'll take me bowling!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Take three deep breaths

Image
Confession: I first started writing this post in January 2020. It was my last entry on this blog. The irony is not lost on me that it was the same month coronvirus was first announced in Seattle, or that two months later we'd all be quarantined to our homes for an unspecified amount of time. We know what happened next: nearly 7 million deaths worldwide from COVID-19; masks, masks and more masks; homeschool and home offices, devisiveness and hatred that split apart our country; vaccinated vs. unvaccinated status tearing apart families and so on. We don't need to rehash it more than that except to say our world will never be the same, especially around mental health.  So was it just the calm before the storm that made me write the following words before all hell broke loose in the world via the pandemic, politics, transphobia, gun violence, racism, and the like?  Was I steeling myself for what was just around the corner?  Over the last few weeks I have had a series of physical a
Read more

I'm sorry Oprah

Image
Getting a smart phone was not very smart...or so I'm learning. Choosing the Droid over an I-phone was stressful enough but more so is the constant nagging I have to check my email (work and personal), or my Facebook, or my texts many, MANY times a day. My family makes fun of my texts as they are often in another language. Example: "On my way home" could come out like "I am a gnome." Or something. My husband feels I'm becoming way to intimate with Mr. Blue. I think he's more annoyed with the song I put on for his calls: the sticky sweet addictive country hit, "Stuck on You" by Sugarland. So this week I am vowing to put the phone aside more even though it is sort of my lifeline to my kids, my peeps and co-workers. The reason it has finally hit home is that I have caught myself texting while operating a motor vehicle which in my state is now illegal and well, just plain stupid. Oprah even says so and has a contract for folks to sign called &
Read more

Breathe

Back in the '80s...or maybe it was the '70s, I remember hearing about some self-help book titled, "I'm OK, You're OK." I think it's a great title, but unfortnately I cannot relate right now. I am not OK. My family is not OK. Oh yes, in the greater scheme of things we have food, water and shelter; two incomes; two great kids and live in a country that despite all its backward flaws and quirks is a pretty damn good place to live. But in the past week my life was turned on its head when I found out that mental health is NOT something to take for granted. Last Tuesday I spent 7+ hours in the Emergency Room psych unit at the local hospital. Out of respect of privacy for the individual involved, I am not going to say who, but let it be known that it was a very sad place and not one I want to revisit. The walls were that soft blue meant to calm. The rooms had no doors for protection and observation. And the lifeless shapes of people obviously desperate enough
Read more