Boy Crazy

I have two children.
Two daughters.
One teen, 14, one almost-ish preteen, 10.

Both boy crazy.  Both headstrong in their own convictions.  

One, I’m trying to teach not to be so apologetic in life.  The other I find myself telling her it wouldn’t kill her to apologize more often.

Both make me proud.  Both make me laugh.  Both are a blessing.

That being said...

Holy teenage crab-ass hormones, Batman.  I hang on for the ride and when her aloofness flares, I bow out.  She comes around, feeling bad and I feel like I won one battle in the war of The Wonder Years.

The Bi Polarism of teenage angst is not a concept lost on me.  I could’ve been it’s poster child, if I would’ve come out of my room long enough to get my picture taken for the poster that is.  My bedroom is where I lived, wrote poetry, did homework, ate, listened to music, stretched the curly cord of my purple phone across my water bed to talk to girls or boys or to girls about boys.  

So I get it.  I really do.  I get it!

Now that the tables are turned, and I’m the mother; yeah.....Not so getable anymore.

Recently was high school freshman orientation.  An assembly to meet and greet for 20 minutes and then get assigned lockers (and their ‘combos’ as we called them back in the day but now when I say it, the child looks at me and snarls.  Obviously, I am not cool).  Class schedules, and kids with their parents were off, for the next 2 hours to have a mini day, complete with bells ringing, meet the teachers, a mock lunch.

First of all, I could feel the short breaths of hyperventilation on the cusp of our night when I watched my soon to be high schooler open her locker.  Of course, she did it with ease and on the first try her locker just *popped* open.  There she stood looking as bored and empty as the locker itself.  Her mission was accomplished, and I wanted to already start the “when I was your age” speech and let her know how many days I dreaded locker opening.  Seriously.  I never had a working locker in all 4 years of high school.  The few days when it seemed to open with only slight kicks and jiggles, I never remembered my combination.  The secretaries in the office knew me well and it had nothing to do with tardiness.

I have to say, the 4 minutes between classes they give the kids to rush from class to class.....hahahaha!  I’m not even going to TRY to hide the fact that I am so damn glad I’m not in high school anymore.  Good luck! God Speed!  And if he doesn’t, you better, because you’re down to 1:45 and you gotta get way the hell over on the other side of the complex.  My biggest fear was being tardy for a class back then, and now, as an adult, I’d like to think I would’ve staged a coup for the unjust time expectations placed upon the youth of ‘Merica.  My daughter tho?  Her and her long legs went through the halls and left me trailing behind (IT’S 1990 ALL OVER AGAIN!) as she loped her way to each class, not breaking a sweat.

In high school, about her age, was when I met her father.  The thought bubble of her meeting, and possibly marrying, a sweetheart from these exact upcoming days, are not foreign to me.  That’s terrifying to think about!  Her father and I had, what I felt, was very good dating years.  We had good college years.  We had good starting years as a husband and wife.  Bought a house young.  Had kids.  It was all okay at first.  It was the nearly 20+ year mark that we tripped and faltered.  Through counseling and resolutions, it was the military aftermath of deployments that finally did us in.  I am blaming no one but ourselves, but it does make me think back to the smiley freshman I once was.  

How life changed for that girl.  It makes me wonder what is in store for my beautiful child.

Will she meet her husband here?  Will it be a boy I’ve known all my life living here in Small Town USA, or will it be some one who whizzes new into town someday?  Will he be her age or will she set her eyes on an older boy with a car? (Dear God, please don’t let him drive a rusted blue pick up truck he nicknames The Heavy Chevy.)

Maybe she won’t meet him here at all.  Maybe, instead, she’ll dawdle here and there in the dating scene and flourish in college, liking being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.  I’ve told her she can’t get married until she is 35 anyway, so we all know where the boundary lines are.

I think back to those days in high school, when I was so in love, a few times, with boys.  There was the older man who I ‘dated’ (I use that term loosely because our relationship boiled down to some slurping and him buying me beer once.)  God, I hope she doesn’t run with that kind of crowd.  I was pure lucky my 14 year old self wasn’t taking it further with that man, who was at least a decade older than me.  There’s a reason that shit’s illegal.  I pray for her safety in those situations, that she is smarter than I ever pretended to be.

There was a boyfriend I had for 3 months (in freshman terms; eternity) that I thought I was in love with, even though I knew he was gay.  I think he’s gay anyway.  I still do.  But, he’s happily married with kids now, and I long ago gave up knowing or caring what goes on behind his closed doors, so I’m left with nothing but memories of a young relationship that at the time I simply over romanticized.  I remember him fessing up to practicing before he kissed me, assaulting his own forearm.  That was my first real kiss; maybe that’s why I thought I was falling.  Young teenage wonder!  Open hearts and open minds!  I know that my daughter will be naive.  I pray that she navigates her naivety better than I.  I pray that if finds herself at an underage party stuck in the middle of a fight with two drunk boys, one hetro, one possibly homosexual, fighting for her attention, she’ll listen to her heart and leave them both there and come home.

I remember the Foreign Exchange student.  Ahhhhh, yes!  The memory really can’t be ignored, folks.  He was the taker of my young innocence.  Neither one of us knew what we were doing that night in the small spare bedroom of his host family.  He spoke fluent English, but he didn’t talk much.  I imagine he was just as nervous and scared as I was.  We went solely on how we thought grown ups acted.  In the dark.  Silent.  Careful not to wake anyone else.  Our friendship lasted well into the final days of summer that year, until he moved back home, far far away.  Eventually there was nothing more to say in the pretense of keeping a friendship open; it was nothing more than the first hookup I was to have.  Nothing more, nothing less. 
I know my child will probably be faced with these moments in the upcoming 4 years, whether or not it actually happens for her, and whether or not I ever find out about it, will be her decision alone.  Maybe as she ages, I find myself letting go a little.  I am secure in my role as parent that I have done, and continue to do, everything I can to inform her of safety and smarts.  I can now only pray she’s been listening, and that God protects her.

I think of the boy who I knew I was in love with.  I spent days driving through his neighborhood, hoping to see him.  He was the first one I imagined life with.  I wondered about it, wrote my first name with his last name in doodles across my journals.  He was my secret.  He was my heavy heart love.  He was the first face who truly caught my eye and made me do a double take.  He stopped my time.  I also knew he was bad news for me.  I knew we had little in common, coming from completely different walks of life. It didn’t matter; I knew I was lost in love.

And then he died.  

Killed in a stupid accident one busy holiday weekend.  Because no one really knew my feelings, I couldn’t, and didn’t, react to his passing.  I simply didn’t.
I pray my daughter never knows that kind of hurt.  But I know she will.  Eventually.

I met her father about this time in my young life.  We were truly friends for some time, group movie outings, bonfires on the weekends with friends, midnight swims at local lakes, we dated around our circle and eventually ending up with each other.  My parents were leery, but grew to respect him.  My mother herself passed before things turned sour for he and I, so I wonder what she would’ve thought about the last breaths into our marriage; the fights, the lawyers and courtroom battles.  It’s almost more sad to me to recall the late nights of two decades worth of family card games with so many laughs, summer bbq’s,  the joys of the births of our daughters, the everyday life we always seemed to celebrate with each other than it is to more recently recall the shittiness of it all going south.

It is bittersweet to think of these memories with the boy who became my husband, making me what I thought happy was.  Into my second marriage now, older and I hope smarter, I dare say I know better what it is to be happy.  I am never disrespected or chastised in public (or private) for my being myself in this relationship.  There are no longer accusations slung across the room out of despair in an attempt to hold onto something that never was his to hold down.  Of course, as that first wife, I belonged to him in some sense of the term but when he began to treat me as I was worth nothing more than his possession, something he was obligated to control, was when I left him.  He could live in denial all he wanted, but I’d be damned if I were to reside there with him.  That boy from my high school years was a man I ended up marrying, true, but in the end, he was nothing resembling a man at all when he refused to support the children he gave me.  

Bittersweet to be sure.  

And truly humbling.

I want my child protected.  I want my daughters, both of them, to be prepared and sheltered from pain, heartbreak, loss.  I know this is not feasible, so I pray our daughter goes into this next phase of growing up being disrespected just enough to fire her up and make her realize she was meant to be no one’s obligation.  Ever. 

I know from experience, out of all the memories and stories, out of all the lessons learned, that is the one that sticks the strongest to our shell as a woman.