Who Knows Where the Time Goes
Today is my daughter’s birthday. Her 18th birthday.
My journalistic and anthropological forays into her world, into the world of 21st century teens, began when she was 12. This marked the beginning of the Teenage Werewolf years, the rollercoaster years, the years of mood swings and eye rolling and deep sighing and door slamming and back-talking, of fierce combat and icy silences.
And that was just me.
No, I’m kidding.
That was my tween/teen . And me. Except for the door slamming and back-talking. I don’t do that. But let’s just say I made up for it in other ways.
Are those years over? Mostly, I think.
While I was living through the most intense of those werewolf years from 12 to say, 16 1/2 or 17, it felt like it a lifetime. Endless. Boundless. Tearful. Now her middle and high school years (she graduates a week from today) seem like a blur to me. As my husband and I sat in the audience a few nights ago and watched Lizzie be awarded a certificate of mastery in the culinary arts, I thought about how it was just a blink-of-an-eye ago that I bought her an EasyBake oven, and she made a batch of rock-hard cookies. As we sat through an assembly honoring varsity athletes, I remembered standing behind the cage watching Lizzie’s first throw at her first track meet in sixth grade. She was awesome even then. And “then” was, like, five minutes ago. Or so it seems.
Time is so damn weird. Clocks and calendars fool us into thinking it is progressive and logical and unvarying (except on Leap Year). But it is none of that. It is fast and slow. It stops. It accelerates. It goes backward. It jumps. I remember thinking I would never ever get out of high school. I would be there, stuck, forever. And then, miraculously, I wasn’t. I remember thinking I would never ever survive the werewolf years. And now, miraculous I have. We have.
Happy Birthday, Lizz.
June 2nd, 2012 at 12:12 pm
This post makes me feel sad. We’re a year behind you here, so I guess I’m projecting how I expect to feel as we march toward the milestones of high school graduation and 18 years old. Would it be melodramatic to say that the best, most fun and intense time with our child is coming to an end while the best, most fun and intense time in theirs is just beginning?
June 5th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Well, definitely for me the most INTENSE time…but I am not sure about “the best.” That may be, for Lizzie and me, yet to come. I keep hearing from mothers of grown daughters who are all aglow about their relationships. We’ll see.
June 13th, 2012 at 7:58 pm
“Mothers of grown daughters who are all aglow about their relationships …”
I’m clinging to that image, Lauren, like a life raft on a stormy sea. My daughter and I are so similar that it’s hard to imagine that we won’t someday be close again. But maybe that’s why, at 14, she feels the need to pull away so completely. I just hope that I don’t say or do anything in hurt or anger that might impede our connection later.
June 14th, 2012 at 9:45 am
I hear you, Rebecca. Lizzie and I are both very stubborn. I think her ability to stand her ground will be a real asset in life — it has been in mine. But it does make for a tumultuous relationship. Humor is the key, I think. Whenever I say something (in anger or out of hurt) that I regret, I follow with: “That’s so you have something to tell your therapist later.” It generally diffuses the situation. We laugh.