Lizzie regularly rocks out to music – pretty much standard for teens – but I mean she really rocks out … as in full-on Tom-Cruise-Risky-Business-sliding-across-the-floor dancing, often highly credible, quite dramatic lip synching and more than occasional high-decibel, Pat-Benatar –inspired belting out of, well, Pat Benatar.

This show appears nightly at our house, in our kitchen, while Lizzie does the dishes – a new and wonderful thing that simply happened.  Her job has always been to clear the table, but, of her own volition, she recently took on the larger task of loading the dishwasher, hand washing pots and pans, wiping the counters.  Color me amazed.  She now shoos us out of the kitchen, closes the door, cranks up Pandora and goes for it.  I sneak a peek at the show when I come in to make my post-dinner tea.  She used to stop dead when she saw me, embarrassed I guess.  But no longer.  I am even, sometimes, invited to join in.

I don’t know what makes me happier, her love of music, the power and fluidity of her movements, her willingness to let me in — or a clean kitchen.  But I am in heaven.  This latest turn of events also makes the realize how much music used to mean to me when I was her age, how central it was to my daily life, especially to my emotional life, how my day began and ended with music, how I tracked new releases, knew the lyrics to almost every song I heard on the radio, stood in line to buy the newest Stones album.  Back when vinyl was king and people still went to stores to buy music and horse-drawn carriages crowded the cobble-stone streets.  Music was (I’m pretty sure this is a cliché) the soundtrack to my life.

Listening to Lizzie’s soundtrack – in the kitchen, in the car, everywhere she is and whatever else she is doing — has brought me back to those days.  And it feels good.  Uh. You know that it should.

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She’s seventeen, my daughter, just about to start the last half of her senior year, and she doesn’t know what she wants to “be” or “do.” Is that exciting or terrifying?

Both, I think — and also neither.

There’s a part of Lizzie, probably a part of most teens on the cusp of something they don’t understand the momentous cuspiness of, that is consumed with today: the boy who likes her, the essay she is writing, the new mascara she bought, the Xbox game she’s playing.  She could squint into the future and maybe see something, but she’s not interested in squinting.

Every grown-up she encounters asks about her post-graduation plans.  She’s polite, and vague. “Working, traveling, maybe taking some classes,” is what she usually says.  If pressed, she has no plan.  The only plan is:  Get the hell out of high school.

Boy do I get that.

Although I did know what I wanted to “be” when I grew up (yes, a writer) and although by the end of my first semester senior year I had heard that I was accepted to the school I had my heart set on attending, I also was mostly and intensely motivated by the “get the hell out” directive.

There’s this moment – it comes to kids at different ages – when you realize just how constrained your life is, …  read the rest of this entry… »

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What were “teen girls” (searchable term) in the news for during the past few days?  Here’s a sampling:

Two thirteen-year-old girls charged with stealing a woman’s handbag allegedly bashed their victim in the head and pushed her to the ground before robbing her. 

Happily (okay, poor choice of words), this took place not in the U.S. but in Australia, a country that, as we know, was originally settled by boatloads of British prisoners.

A new study conducted by the Boston University School of Public Health found that one in 13 girls ages 14 to 20 have engaged in “multi-person sex.”

It now even has an acronym, MPS, which makes it sound like a disease rather than a party.  I thought the most disturbing thing about this (very small sample) study was not that 7.3 percent said they’d had group sex, and not even that the average age of their first group-sex experience was 15.6 years old.  The most disturbing thing was that the majority of the girls reported being “pressured, threatened, coerced, or forced to participate” at least once.

There was also this, from the Obvious Survey Result Department:  Teen girls are sending close to 4,000 text messages a month.  A new study from Nielsen shows that texting and data usage are surging among teens with the average teenager sending 3,417 texts per month.  However, when they broke that number down by gender it came out to 3,952 for girls and 2,815 for boys.

And finally, there was this heart-warming 1950s-era feature… read the rest of this entry… »

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Yesterday, mid-afternoon, I stopped what I was doing – delving into the secrets of the world’s longest lived people (research for my new book) – drove down the hill to Lizzie’s favorite coffee kiosk, got her an iced mocha and delivered it to the school cafeteria kitchen where she and her catering class were six hours into a cooking marathon.  The marathon, which had begun at 7:30 that morning, would culminate in a complicated, multi-cuisine fundraising event, Global Fusion, that evening.

Lizzie was Chef de Cuisine for the group in charge of cooking Indian food, and she was seriously stressed.  She’d been texting me on and off during the day with news about burned sauces and unflaky pastry shells and sore feet.  I’d texted back offering my services.

“I’ll be your kitchen slave for an hour,” I wrote.

When she didn’t answer – and really I didn’t expect my offer to be accepted ; this was a class project – I texted her:  “Want coffee?”

Immediately, she texted back, “Omg. That would be amazing.” And so I stopped what I was doing and drove 8 miles (R/T) to deliver the mocha.

Why?

It was more than me just being nice.  More than sympathizing/ empathizing with her tough day.  More, even, than the maternal compulsion to “make it all better.” (With coffee…yeah, I know that’s weird.)  It was that I wanted to grab the opportunity to send a particular message:  She could always count on me.  I would be there to help when she needed me.

I think the sweetest words anyone can say (or hear) are not “I love you.”  They are “I’ve got your back.”

To grow up, to walk through life knowing that you can close your eyes and fall backward and someone — your mother – will always be there.  She will catch you.  Her arms will enfold you.  You can rest for a moment, if you need to, against the strength of her body.  You can feel the warmth.   Even if you never fall back, just knowing that you can, knowing that you’re that safe, is an extraordinary thing. I want my daughter to know that extraordinary thing.

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“Don’t forget to turn off the stove before you go,” Lizzie calls up the stairs to me.  She’s noticed that there’s a low flame under the stockpot.  She’s about to leave the house, and she knows I’ll be leaving a few minutes later.  For a split-second, I am annoyed.  She’s telling me?  I’m the one who tells!  She’s reminding me?  I’m the one who reminds!

But the instant I note my annoyance, it is gone, replaced by a warm glow that takes me completely by surprise.

“Got, it. Liz,” I yell back.  “And thanks.”

After she leaves, after I turn off the stove (which, in truth, I would have forgotten), in the car on the way to do those endless errands that expand into and sometimes take over one’s life, I think about that little interchange.  What was I feeling?  What happened?

It’s interesting to untangle.

Here’s what I think: The warm glow that displaced my annoyance?  That was the warmth of recognition: I heard myself in the words of my daughter.  She noticed what I would have noticed.  She said what I would have said.   And she said it in a grown-up, matter-of-fact tone of voice that I recognized as my own.

As a daughter, one of the worst things I can imagine hearing is  … read the rest of this entry… »

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Grumpy. Happy. Grumpy. Happy. This is the daily rhythm with a teen on board. Do the moods of my husband or sons affect me as much?  Well, guys are generally less mercurial, at least my guys, but even when there are ups and downs, I don’t seem to react to them as strongly.  Maybe it’s because mothers see themselves in their daughters – and vice versa, for better or ill.  Maybe it‘s that girls – my girl at least – are masterful and intuitive momcentric button-pushers.

For example, she knows, really knows, how much I want to share my excitement with her about what I see or hear or read, so shutting me down (and out), getting grumpy when I start to share some oh-so-fascinating tidbit, (this is one on her grumpy list in the previous post) is an extremely effective way of keeping me at arms’ length, at guarding her personal space.  I get it. I just don’t like it.

As promised, here is what makes me happy (and grumpy) about Life with Liz:

I am happy when Lizzie is enthusiastic and excited about a new book, a recipe, the start of track season, learning to drive – anything that captures and focuses her attention and interest, anything that makes her sparkle.

I am grumpy when she leaves wet towels on the floor, when her clean clothes are buried under sweaty work-out gear, when her room and her bathroom take on a post-Katrina vibe. I like my environment at least semi-orderly…and it makes me grumpy when it’s not.  But more than that, I interpret her sloppiness as lack of respect for our home and all the work we (well, some of us) do to keep it nice.

I am happy when she blasts music and sings and dances while doing the dinner dishes. She’s managed to embrace the chore and make it her own.  And she’s got all the right moves. (Slight grumpiness ensues if what she is blasting is German metal music.  I don’t think I need to explain that.)

I am grumpy when she either willfully or (worse) unconsciously ignores me – not just what I say but my very existence.  Sometimes it feels as if I am operating in an alternative universe that only rarely intersects with hers.  Otherwise, I am ghost mom.  An occasionally, grumpy ghost mom.

Now let me hear your happy/ grumpy moments…

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In the spirit of therapeutic dialog – the spirit of this blog, I hope, leavened with the dark humor any mother of a teen must embrace in order to remain sane  – I suggested to Lizzie that we continue contemplating what makes us happy.  With a twist.  I wanted to know what I do that makes her happy…besides give her money or leave her alone.  Or both, I am betting, in that order.  I also wanted to know – or do I? – what I do that makes her grumpy.  So I asked her to fill in these blanks:  I am happy when my mom________.  And:  I am grumpy when my mom __________.  Turn-about being fair play, I will do the same in the next post.

Join us.  It might be an interesting exercise for you and your daughter.  Or, gulp, you and your mom.

Here’s Lizzie:

I am happy when my mom and I talk at our favorite coffee hang-out about our day.  It’s our best time together.

I am grumpy when my mom bugs me about a video she watched or an article she read (or one she wrote!), and she wants me to have the same interest in it when I don’t care.  And besides that would involve me taking my eyes off my computer screen.

I am happy when my mom is happy.  Like when she can laugh at herself (that day she brought two right-foot sneakers to the gym and then posted a photo on fb making fun of herself).  Or when she smiles at my crude humor.  Or better yet when she makes an off-color remark herself that makes me shout “Mommmm!” in astonishment.

I am grumpy when my mom wants to talk about the future and colleges and what’s my plan.  She has all these ideas, and she is more enthusiastic about college than I am.  And it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell her that I don’t know what I want to do.  She keeps asking.

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Sexy software developer.  Naughty neurosurgeon.  Raunchy radiologist.  Smutty seismologist. Bawdy botanist.

No, you won’t find those costumes at Party City for Halloween this year.  But why not? Since we insist – well, somebody insists — on sexualizing this holiday (at least for girls), why not broaden the occupational horizon to reflect women’s place in the world of work?

Shameless chef.  Indecent information technologist.  Obscene opthamologist. Wanton wildlife biologist.  Lewd  lawyer.  And don’t forget: Bodacious blogger!

You get the idea.  I refuse to rant (again) about the Sluttification of (fill in the blank) this holiday, hallways at high schools, young adult fiction, music, social media, our – and even more importantly, our daughters’ – lives.  But I didn’t want Halloween to pass without comment.  Also, I wondered (speaking of sluttification), if I used “slutty” in the headline for this post whether unsuspecting internet porn-seekers might end up on my blog.  I can check tomorrow at Google Diagnostics.  I don’t imagine any of them will stay on this page long enough to read the post, but you never know.

Meanwhile, Happy Halloween to all you dangerous dams. (Dams was the only synonym for “mother” I could find that alliterated with anything vaguely smutty.)

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How much the same – and how different – are my daughter and me?  It may be that this question can be answered, at least partially, by looking at what makes both of us happy.  And how different are the things that make a teen happy from those that make a midlife woman smile? (That one’s easier.) This has been an interesting exercise — fun but also revealing.  In fact, writing my list, thinking about what makes me happy, made me happy.

How do your lists compare?  Note that we both have items involving lazing in bed, eating junk food and being affected by the moods of others.  A few of the differences between our lists are more about our ages than our personalities, I think – as in her joy at driving a car (I remember that extraordinary sense of freedom, that thrill, when I was her age) and her attraction to video games.  Other differences, like how many of my happy moments involve physical activity (Lizzie lists none) might speak to something deeper. Here’s my happy list.

1.  Sleeping between flannel sheets in an invigoratingly cold, windows-thrown-open-in-dead-of-winter bedroom.

2.  Grapefruit-flavored Jellybellies

3.  7 am power workouts with the Sweat Chicas and our 500-lb deadlifting Boy Toy, Randy

4.  Hiking in the mountains anywhere, but especially the Kootenays

5.  Family dinners

6.  The chickens and the cat racing to greet me when I return home

7.  Lizzie in one of her spontaneous, blindingly sunny, effervescent (and, alas, evanescent) moods

8.  Running on the beach at dawn, the clouds spilling over Neahkahnie, the air scoured clean by its 5000+-mile trip across the Pacific

9.  Running along the 16^th century wall that rings Lucca, exchanging early morning “Giorno!” greetings with the octogenarian men who walk briskly, argue politics and yes, stare at your butt as you pass them

10.  That extraordinary high-energy, forget-time-and-space trance that means I am in the zone, writing.

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What makes a teen girl happy?  (No. “Gagging her mother” is not an acceptable answer.)  Although I live with Lizzie and observe – and too often participate in – her various moods, from exuberance to misery, I wanted to know what small, every day things make her happy.  I thought it would be fun and – mirable dictu! she agreed – for both of us to make our own happiness lists, without conferring. I was really curious to find out if anything on our separate lists would overlap.  I didn’t imagine that the very same thing would make us both happy, but I wondered if we might come up with items in similar categories.

I’m going to reproduce her list below.  Tomorrow I’ll post my list.  Meanwhile, you know what would make me really happy?  If you chimed in and posted a comment at the site with 2 or 3 things that make you happy.  Cheesiness (cuddling with puppies, etc.) allowed but not encouraged.

Here’s Lizzie’s list:

1. Drinking a strong iced coffee while reading the newspaper comics
2. Lying on the couch and playing computer games
3. Lying on a different couch and playing Xbox with the cat on my lap
4. When people around me are happy
5. The tranquility of lying in my bed after a long day, not quite awake, not quite asleep, with my imagination wandering
6. The awesomeness of smoothly switching gears in my manual-transmission car while listening to Final Countdown on the radio
7. The day I stop sprouting pimples overnight (future happiness)
8. Going up in gauges…shhhh
9. An extreme concoction at Yogurt Extreme
10. Jon BonJovi + Kevin Bacon =

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