Excruciating loss. That’s what being the parent of a teenager is all about.
I once believed I could be different. I could defy the odds, and have those teens around who adored me, who could think of nothing else but how to please me. And then I had actual children, living breathing human beings who had minds and hearts of their own. And I realized: They need to move beyond me, outside of me. Truly.
I know we were once bonded, that I sustained these beings for nine long months — more if you believe the doctor’s timeline, which I never understood.
I remember every vibration and gurgle, I remember the nausea and the tremors that ran down my sciatic nerve, nearly paralyzing me. I remember the ecstasy when their little faces emerged from up over my knees, and the moment the cord was irrevocably cut.
And then … they were them … and I was me.
But I wanted it to be different. I wanted to feel instantly, constantly connected. It isn’t like that. It is an amazing parallel universe that gets created, where you have brought a living being into the world and are responsible for taking care of it. You are in charge, but they are entity of their own.
Raising teenagers, letting go, and watching them pull away and put their trust in others, besides you, is the most painful, ego-busting b——- that ever was.
Really? I brought you in to this world and you’re not going to listen to me? You don’t want to follow my every move?
That’s what I want to say sometimes, what I do say sometimes if I really lose it, like right before my period. Really? You’re going to treat me like that?
And, yet. I understand. I really do. I was a teenager once, and it was hell. Parents don’t seem to get it at all. There is no one around to tell you what to do in a way that makes any sense most of the time. Emotions are just beginning to surface, thoughts of what it all means, and how you fit in to the world.
There was the time they looked at their hands and were so amazed, remember?
This is just that, I tell myself, except this time the looking is internal. So how do you get in there to help them figure it out?
Clearly, you can’t just straight-up ask. I’ve tried.
Like a million times.
I used to sit on the closed toilet seat as they bathed or, later, showered. And I’d try to talk to them like the mom in “Franny and Zooey,” straight up. But then I reread “Franny and Zooey” and realized that mom is bat s— crazy. And her kids are completely strange and suicidal!
J.D. Salinger is good. How did he figure out how to tell a story of a crazy family, and tell it with love? Brilliant. But there are no answers there.
I guess you just have to stay the course, keep talking, and listening if and when they talk.
My sitting-on-the-toilet-while-they-shower days have come, mostly, to a close. I still like to peek in occasionally, check that everything’s going okay with the bod and make sure their toenails are clipped. I still want to make them sit on my lap in their towel and snuggle. But I think too that they need their privacy, not their crazy mom trying to maintain that bond.
I experienced it for the first time this past week when I said, “I love you, call me, or text” to my 14-year-old in the airport, traveling solo with his baseball team, and I got the eye-roll and the making-fun-of-mom murmur amongst his friends. It is excruciating.
