This Point In Time

This was a big year for me. I turned fifty, my book was published, I had time with my family, and there was much to celebrate. All good things are not the reality of day-to-day life, though, and like joy, disappointment, sadness, and change are all real too. Shortly after my birthday, as if my body got the memo that it was now fifty, I spotted a few grey hairs. I also started feeling tired more often, and with no change at all to my diet, I gained some extra weight in my midsection, thanks perimenopause. 

My teenager was in the weeds with the academic demands of junior year of High School, and her stress level reached record highs. My twelve-year-old, who plays hard, visited urgent care for X-rays enough times that the tech knows his name. We lost money in stocks, and had an awful loss in an election, and now have to ride out another term with someone who is taking our country backwards. All of this to say the curveballs have been thrown.

I went to London recently and saw one of my best friends. We picked up exactly where we left off years ago, and after running into each other’s arms and crying with joy at seeing each other, we talked, and laughed, and talked some more. We discussed how life can be so busy and full enough at times that you don’t even know what day it is. We spoke of our children and our parents, and how overall, even at its craziest, we live very good lives with so much to be grateful for. She mentioned a quote she had read from a rabbi that she had seen, where he says something about wishing you a life with many problems. I am not getting it exactly right, but the gist is that if you have a major problem in your life, it consumes all of you, leaving no space for anything else. If you have room for many problems, you also have room for many blessings.

A few months ago, I set my hand down on top of the cover of our grill. It isn’t ever used, but there have been times in the last few years when it is as if some phantom switch is turned, and it is incredibly hot. This was one of those times. I signed the side of my hand, and it blistered within minutes. It was painful and annoying. One week later, as I pushed down a carton into my recycling bag, a sharp object poked through the bag and cut my finger. It would not stop bleeding and was right on the joint of my finger. Much to my chagrin, my husband and I decided it was best to go to urgent care. I got a tetanus shot, soaked it in iodine before getting it closed, and bandaged it. It was quite painful and didn’t heal right, but in the grand scheme of things, small problem.

My best friend is dealing with a terminal illness and running out of options to help her. She feels lousy after each round of chemo, and at this point, it isn’t helping her enough anyway. Big Problem! We handle the details of her being sick with tears and laughter, which is as good as we can get with such dark times, I suppose. We joke about cutting out sugar, stress, and annoying people. We pretend to plan a trip to an island together where she can just stare out at the ocean. We laugh about her choosing her own urn on Amazon and keeping it in her save for later items. We crack each other up more than we cry because we still have the choice to feel it whatever way we want. For now.

The house I grew up in will always feel like home to me. I admire how some people are able to go clear out and sell their childhood homes and view it as just a thing. My parents are old, and admittedly, I live in denial that they won’t get better. I hear myself say “If “they die, rather than “ when.” My sister is the opposite. She is very practical and business-like about what we should do to prepare. My brother, the middle child, is in the middle of us on this. I still try to get my dad to exercise and continue building muscle mass, and my sister suggests that his body is giving out and that I need to accept that. We will need to figure out what we are doing with their home and all the logistics, but in the meantime, I still hope for muscle rebuilding and recovery. This is very much a normal part of life. People don’t live forever, but for me, this too is big!

Wherever I get a call with bad news about my parents, I start to think about how very little stays the same forever. My daughter will go to college, and our family of four that we have spent years building will change as we know it. I might not have a family home to go back to when my parents are gone. My best friend, whom I call all the time, might not be able to answer my calls. Sad as all of this is, this is part of life. We have celebrations and disappointments. We have accomplishments and we have losses. I keep thinking of the song “Landslide.” Change is coming my way, I know that. For now, though, I can only focus on this point in time.

One Word Answers

 When I had my first baby, we were invited to a wedding just a few weeks after she was born. No cell in my being was ready to leave her with anyone. I didn’t know it consciously, but I suppose I became one of those attachment parenting types. I had always wanted children, and when my husband and I wanted to have a baby together, it didn’t quite happen on our timeline. We had waited a long time and experienced a lot of challenges before the title of parents was bestowed upon us. When that moment finally came, we were ready. There was no difficult transition into parenting. I was in love instantly and found being a new mother a wondrous time. I was grateful to have the opportunity to stay home, and when I was itching to get back to work, I created opportunities that included her being by my side. 

That wedding when she was a few weeks old could have been an opportunity for a date alone with my husband, but we were both so new at parenting that we spent the whole time out concerned about her. My husband’s cousin watched her while we were out. She had five of her own children, so she was overqualified for caring for our newborn, but still, we worried. We called her too many times to check in. We asked if she was okay, and did she need us to come back. When we arrived back after the wedding and reunited with our baby, I felt such huge relief. We were together again. 

I have been one of those overly involved moms. I took her to mommy and me classes. I volunteered at my daughter’s preschool and later elementary school to come in once a week to teach yoga. We attended lots of family events and activities together. I became the PTA president of her elementary school. I advocated for language lessons, an International festival, and a new fundraising event, and added some friendly competition as well as a new sense of community. My daughter was always happy to see me at her school. She always ran up to hug me if she could and didn’t seem to mind having her mom around. She seemed to appreciate it.  

Happily, the most important role I have had in my life is being a mother. Being a mother takes the top spot for how I identify myself. I am proud of how I parent, and I feel very connected to my children. I wouldn’t say I am a helicopter parent or a controlling parent, but I would say that I am aware of what my children are doing, and how they are doing, and I am available to them. As elementary school ended and middle school began, I stepped back from volunteering at school. It was time for my daughter to have her own space. My husband and I did start going out on dates again. I started working more, and in the summer, our daughter even went to summer camp for a week on her own. 

Walking into my house, it is hard to miss family photos all over the walls, in albums, and even a pillow version of one of my favorite holiday pictures of my two kiddos bundled into hats, scarves, and sweaters. I remember where each photo was taken, the outfits that have since come and gone, and even the way their red, round cheeks felt to kiss back then, when they were a little fuller. I knew that these little kids would grow into big kids, then teens, and one day grow up into adulthood. I have heard a million times or more how time flies and to enjoy the moment, and I thought I understood. Now I see those photos of my little children, and I never imagined I would have to mourn the loss of them being small. I didn’t know how much I would miss their five fingers curled around my thumb or washing their downy hair for them, or the high-pitched voices they grew out of. 

We have been lucky that my daughter and I have gotten to spend a lot of time together. We have always been close as a family, and she and I have special things we love to do together. We love seeing theatre, and movies, visiting animals, snuggling our dog, skiing, taking new adventures, traveling, going out to brunch, and trying new lattes together. We have been close, and she has always been open with me in sharing everything from friend drama, sharing who she likes, how she is doing with school, and the goals she has for the future. She is sixteen now, and this school year has been the most challenging yet. She is more stressed than I have ever seen her. She is busier than she has ever been. She is working harder than she has ever worked. She has also experienced the reality of disappointment. As much as we want to believe that if we teach our children to go for their dreams, their dreams will come true, the truth is that it is not always the case. She has reached up and out for some big things this year, and some of them slipped from her grasp. This is important to learn in life, and I am grateful to be able to be here to hold her through her pain and let go when she is ready to try again, and yet I know we won’t always be in the same place in the future. We will likely not be in the same house, the same city, or the same state. 

A friend told me that her sister used the password of a date for some of her logins. The date was the month that her daughter would leave for college because she couldn’t wait for her to go. She told me that it is not uncommon for mothers and daughters to start pulling away from each other a year or two leading up to college. It is a subconscious protection measure in preparation for the separation that is coming. I hear things like this, and my reaction in my mind is feeling sad for these people. I think that could never be me, or that it's too bad she can’t enjoy these last few months with her child. Well, here I am, a few months late, and I understand this more than I want to. This is not a choice I have made to have friction between my sweet girl and me; it’s just there, and she isn’t feeling as sweet these days.

There is this polarizing pushing and pulling that I feel is happening to the two of us right now. She needs me less than she did, she wants to need me less than she does, and doesn’t like it when I still need to parent her. She wants to believe she knows what is best for her; she doesn’t want my opinions, but comes running to me to help her before things fall apart. She wants to be independent but doesn’t want to do her own laundry, make her own food, or get her own transportation. She is moody, and I know I am not supposed to take it personally, but I still do. She wakes up and gets ready for school, and is so full of angst that she can barely talk to me. She gets home from school with so much on her plate that she doesn’t have a minute to talk to me. She sits at dinner, and if she is preoccupied, she will barely answer our questions with one word. At times, I feel the need to increase the speed at which I am talking to her because the window of time she has the capacity to talk to me is so limited. 

There are days when I confront her on some of this, and she has no idea that she has done anything to upset me. She doesn’t understand that if I get snubbed every time I reach out, it doesn’t make me want to extend my hand so much. She doesn’t understand that some days I resent her, or that some days I drop her off at school and want to cry. She doesn’t understand that I miss my little girl and am having some serious growing pains trying to get through this transition while she grows up. I do want her to understand that she cannot be rude or disrespectful. She needs to understand when to show gratitude and that she is not just entitled to all we provide. She needs to understand that she has new responsibilities that come with getting older and how to manage them in her day-to-day life. She does not need to understand that she is hurting my feelings, that I am having trouble letting her go, or that I am jealous of the hours she spends talking to her friends. Those are part of the whole package of parenting. Like it or not, I am going over this bump in the road.

 She is a budding filmmaker and last year made a short called “Still My Little Girl”. It was a beautiful, bittersweet story about the relationship between a mother and daughter when the girl was nine and then again when she was a teenager. She showed that at nine, the mother was the apple of her daughter’s eye, and as a teenager, she could barely look her in the eye. She did not play the teenager, and I did not play the mother. This story wasn’t ours, but she seemed to be foreshadowing what was coming up the pike for us a year and a half later.  

Every bit of what she is experiencing right now is normal. Junior year school stress, social navigating, deciding big future decisions, budgeting her time, managing what is on her plate now, while trying to prepare for what is ahead. It is a scary time, and I understand. I want her to know I understand. I will have a day or two where I can’t say anything right, and then a day like today where she asks me for a hug and neither of us wants to be the first to let go. I know that as far as teenage drama and angst, I have a wonderful kid, and it could be so much worse, but I also miss the amount of time she could spare for me. I need to lower my expectations and gratefully settle for the time we do have together. I do wish, though, that she could humor me when I check in and inquire how she is doing with more than one-word answers. I’d settle for two.

Sad For Her

 A few months ago my daughter participated in a theatre competition. Growing up around theatre I had never heard of doing it competitively. This was a competition for high school students, and although it sounded light and fun, it was anything but. As the mother of a boy who competes regularly in team sports, I am accustomed to intense sports parents. I agreed to volunteer for the theatre competition, unaware of what I was signing up for. 

When I signed up to help, I thought it was to drive up snacks, drop them off, and leave. I signed up to be at the competition all day. It was intense. There was a musical category, dramatic scenes, monologue, make-up, costumes, category after category of theatre kids trying to win each round to go on to the next. My daughter’s school had a competitor in almost every category. I had no idea how stiff the competition would be. My daughter was in a group performing a musical stuffed into about eight minutes. Together with her cast, they got through round one, which everyone does. They had hoped to move on to round two and only six of the ten groups would go on to the next round. Having seen them along with the competition, I was certain they would move on. I was wrong. For whatever reason they were in the bottom four and the competition ended there for them.

All ten of the kids were in tears. They were shocked at the results and hugged each other sobbing about how unfair it all seemed. After all, it is art, it is subjective. I knew they did an amazing job, but the play was controversial and dealt with some strong themes. Maybe the judges weren’t open-minded enough. It was a heavier piece than most of the others, maybe it wasn’t light enough for the judges. It wasn’t a common musical, maybe the judges preferred a show they were familiar with. Whatever it was, it was upsetting and none of us could believe that it ended so soon for them, without any plans of getting to perform it again, it was over. 

The director of the theatre program came with us that day and as she watched the students navigate their upset she posed a question to some of us moms. “Did we think our children’s hurt is harder for them or us?” At that moment watching my daughter and her friends crying, I felt awful for her, but it seemed she was taking it harder than me. I wanted to help and immediately offered her and her friends ideas of how to make them feel better. I told them that if they wanted to get a chance to perform the piece again we could figure out how to make that happen. I hurt for and with her but didn’t think more than her.

That director’s question has entered my head again in the last few days. For the whole school year, my daughter has hoped and planned for a project for her film class. She had to make the tough decision between doing film or theatre because the times conflicted and much to her chagrin she couldn’t do both. She chose film because ultimately this is what she wants to study in college, and with it being her junior year she wanted her portfolio to reflect her interests. Each year the film program offers an opportunity for six of the fifty or so kids to present a pitch to the other students. This year about twenty-three kids pitched their ideas. The class then votes that night on the ten they would like to see more of. Those ten then write a script and do a table read for the other students and they vote again on their top six.  

My daughter’s pitch was one of the top ten chosen and she worked tirelessly for weeks on her script, hoping to secure one of the six coveted spots. Based on what she told me about the other ideas that were being flushed out in class, I was impressed with the complexity of her idea. There were four or five others with a lot of potential too, but a handful of kids who stopped coming to screenwriting class, and a few who didn’t finish their idea. We felt good about her chances. We were confident based on the time and effort she put into her work. When the day came to do the table reads, I went in to help her read for the part of the mother in her script. I listened to some of the other scripts. I took in the room of teenagers sitting and listening to script after script looking bored or looking at their phones. I wondered how they could focus on storylines and shoot details while sitting for two hours after sitting in classes all day. They had no scripts in front of them to follow along to. The sounds of the reader’s voices blended in a monotonous tone. How will they be able to vote on which scripts were their favorite when they all blended into each other? 

When it was my daughter’s turn there were two left after her. We all read the script nicely enough, but the room was tired, myself included. When the two read after her I think everyone perked up a bit knowing it was ending soon. I felt the last three as well as one or two others stood out clearly to me as stronger stories. I drove us home feeling optimistic, but a few hours later we were shocked and disappointed. Her film wasn’t chosen. The last two read after hers were, but two of the other strong ideas weren’t chosen either. If that disappointment didn’t burn enough, she had developed her script together with a little pod of three other girls who had also been chosen and all three of the others’ films were chosen to be made, but sadly not hers.

As I reeled and tried to make sense of my thoughts, I realized how flawed this decision process felt. One of the other kids whose film idea was one of the top ten is a senior in high school, and this would be her last opportunity to participate in this program. One of the scripts chosen, that in my opinion wasn’t complete, was done by students who didn’t show up for many of the classes. Lastly, there was one student who was chosen last year as well and has already had this opportunity. It all felt unfair. The results were out though and there was not anything to do about it. As a parent, I contemplated pointing these things out in an email to the teacher, but to what end? My daughter didn’t want me to, and at a certain point, I felt it should be the students bringing these questions up, not the parents. Also, life hurts sometimes, life can be unfair, and we don’t win every time. That reality is sadly one we can’t and shouldn’t protect our children from. Yet still, it hurt so much watching her sadness and feeling it too.

As I tried to sleep that night I kept tossing and turning thinking about how much this stings. The next day in film class they all went in but were released early because of the long day they put in the day before. When my daughter stood up to leave she looked at her pod of three and asked them if they were walking out too. They stared back at her and said they had to stay for a class for the kids whose films were chosen. She left without them, waited to get into my car, and then started to cry. Today in her dance class the teacher gave a shout out to her friend on her film getting chosen and asked her to tell the class what her film was about. 

I have been trying to find positive ways to spin some of this for my daughter and myself. I keep trying to let it go but it keeps popping into my head. She is doing her best to stay strong and resilient while I am doing my best to hide from her that I am not. So back to the question from the director about who hurts more, the parent or the child when the child is sad, and in this case I would say both of us are so sad. This time she is seemingly shaking it off a bit faster than I am, but kids mimic what they see, so I am doing my best to constructively move on and away from what won’t be the last of her heartaches. I am also modeling what it looks like to persevere and find that next opportunity because this is not the last.

Another September

 In the past, I have always dreaded September. It felt like a month-long version of a Monday. I would mourn the end of summer and have to prepare myself for the monotony of school starting again. It was always daunting and the anticipation of a year of academia would kick off my anxiety with a bang. When I stopped attending school, I still suffered from the Sunday night blues and the September end-of-summer bummer. Old habits die hard.

Recently, one of my best friends shared with me that her daughter gets very anxious every Sunday night. My friend shared with her daughter that I used to call her crying Sunday night after Sunday night in our twenties upset that the weekend was over. I would tell her I was anxious about the week starting and she would remind me each time I did that it was only the anticipation itself that was upsetting me. She would assure me that when Monday morning did come, I would be fine. She was mostly right. I then tended to anticipate the worst. I love that I have become an example for her daughter now, and I hope that she sees me now as someone who has been able to keep that anticipation in check. 

I don’t get anxious on Sunday nights anymore. Sometimes I am sad that the weekend is over and feel the weight of responsibilities upon me. The routine lunch making, waking up early, and having to get out the door doesn’t always give me that warm welcoming feeling, but it doesn’t fill me with dread either. My children have had some of my anxiety passed down to them, but even with that, they manage it much better than I did as a child. Despite being sad, overwhelmed, or nervous for the first day of school they were able to keep their eyes on the parts they looked forward to as well. It hasn’t been all roses and butterflies but school provides them opportunities socially (even though that part can suck sometimes) academically (also sucky sometimes) artistically, creatively, and athletically in ways that we are all grateful for. 

It isn’t often but once in a while, I will get that uninvited familiar pang of dread at the end of the weekend. I will try to determine if it is just that my body remembers the routine so well or if indeed there is something that I am upset about. It has been two years since my life was turned inside out and backward by debilitating anxiety, so at times I get anxious about being anxious. Mostly, these days I am counting my blessings for being on the other side of the journey. I am so grateful and relieved to be healthy. Each day is a gift and now that I have learned how the other shoe can drop at any point, I don’t take my days for granted.

I have learned to accept that there is only so much in my control. While it might look like other people around you might have it easier, no one gets through life without a struggle here and there. I allow myself the grace to take one beat at a time since I can overwhelm myself when I try to plan too far into the future anticipating (there it is again) what is next. I remind my children to do the same when they fear for the whole school year ahead of them instead of one moment at a time. I have taught myself and the kids about talking to themselves and building your confidence. I have explained what parts of life we can step into and change and where we need to step back and let things be.

Even in the overwhelming month of September, I am present, wide-eyed, and happy to be here. I am also compartmentalizing. I have a lot to celebrate this month and my cup is full. Twenty years with my husband, a published book, and a big birthday coming. I have to give room for the sad stuff too and while life can be wonderful it is not always fair. Positive thinking is amazing, but you can’t mantra away cancer and disease. My best friend has terminal pancreatic cancer and she has been nothing short of a walking miracle since getting diagnosed three years ago. She has been told it’s gone, it’s back, you are defying odds to things aren’t looking so good again. She compartmentalizes her time by accepting what she can’t change, trying her best to beat bad odds, and being focused on being a mother to her three children.  

Last week on September 11th I thought about lives lost in 2001 and mourned those I knew as well as those I didn’t. The next day I celebrated my anniversary and was basking in the memories from twenty years ago. On the same day, my friend got the news that her cancer was growing once again. She wasn’t ready to share the news with anyone so just the two of us talked about it together until her doctor weighed in the next day. After that, her husband posted the news on Facebook and as I read his words I grew upset with him. She is so private and it’s not her style to announce things to the world. I also came to understand that it was easier for me to get angry with him for his words than it was for me to allow myself to feel the devastation from the reality of his words. 

With half of the month behind us already I am holding on tightly since it can be quite a ride. There isn’t much to be gained from looking too far ahead so I am stopping whenever possible to breathe in the moment. Time has a way of moving too quickly and I want to stretch it out to last a bit longer. Even in September.

Unimaginable

 Everybody has friends that they used to be so close to and then time and distance comes between them. Most of the time you can see pictures of that person on social media and get the posted version of their life. You can tell if they are single or got married if they still live in the same city they used to, or if they have children. It doesn’t equal a real friendship with that person but it is better than having them slip out of your life forever.

I have one of those friends. There was never a conflict between us that tore us apart. We never had a falling out. I never intended that we wouldn’t always be friends. We lived across the hall from each other in New York. The building was on 71st Street on the Upper West Side. It was an old brownstone that was seemingly divided into a bunch of tiny apartments. It was a walk up and she and I lived on the fourth floor. My place, you could not even call it an apartment, was on one end of the hall, and hers was on the other. In between us, there were two other tiny apartments. She and I both had a window, but that seemed like the biggest feature. We each had a loft bed, a stove, and a tiny toilet with a shower only big enough to squeeze into. When you opened the front door it hit the loft bed because there wasn’t enough room for it to swing all the way open. The only sink was a tiny bathroom sink with a medicine cabinet over it where you could keep toiletries and dish soap.

Between us, those two other tiny apartments didn’t even have a window. They each only had a glass skylight overhead. One was occupied by an old woman and the other by an old man. They weren’t friendly but they seemed to be friends with each other. They tolerated us youngins. My friend and I would sometimes open both of our front doors to make the hallway appear to be part of our “apartments.” More often than not though we would go out down the street to grab food, take a walk, or sit and talk somewhere. When Krispy Creme came to NY there was a location dangerously close to us around the block. The first time we tried them we couldn’t get enough and ordered seconds together.

That was a moment in time in our twenties. We were both recent college graduates just taking our first steps out into adult living. We hadn’t quite landed and didn’t know where we would put our feet down. She was living on her own in a new country having grown up in Prague, and I was living on my own in the same city I had lived in my whole life. When another friend of mine asked me if I wanted to drive cross country with her to try living in Los Angeles, I had to make a really hard decision — one that would impact the rest of my life. I remember weighing the pros and cons while sitting in my tiny apartment. I didn’t want to move so far away from my family. I didn’t know if I wanted to say goodbye to NYC. I wasn’t sure of how I would get started once I made it to California. I didn’t want to leave my friend across the hall, but as I sat in that tiny apartment I looked at my belongings I had a feeling if I stayed I would just end up like the two people in the hall who probably lived in these apartments their whole adult life. 

That was twenty-five years ago, and I never moved back. I go home to visit often, but I am a California Girl now and I love it. My husband is from here, and we have started our own family here. When I go back to NYC, I try to see as many friends as I can but once I had kids that became harder and harder. I had to settle for updates online as a poor replacement for seeing people face-to-face. My friend across the hall married the boyfriend that she had met right before I left. They stayed in the city for a while building their careers before eventually having a little girl. A few years later they had a little boy. I was excited for her as well as in awe because I too eventually wanted to start a family and she seemed to get the whole package. 

A few years later I too got married, then had a little girl followed by a little boy. We all had our hands full and before we realized years had gone by since we were in touch. A few years ago I saw a photo of them all out and we said a quick hello to one another. Then yesterday I saw she posted a photo of her son saying she is missing him, especially on his birthday. I scrolled back to see if it had ever said anywhere else anything about what happened to him. There wasn’t much but it didn’t take a lot of investigating to see a photo of him a year ago without any hair, and then another with him ringing the bell at the hospital when he completed treatment. I went back and reread the message from yesterday over and over. It didn’t seem possible that he could be gone. Maybe she said she missed him because he was away somewhere. He couldn’t have passed away because he was not even sixteen, and it all would have been too unfair. I could not process what I was reading. It was too unimaginable 

When I became a mother a friend of mine gave me a book called “Operating Instructions” by Anne Lamott. In between nursing, changing diapers, and trying to catch up on sleep I read the book. She spoke of wanting her son to become all these great things when he got older and then stopped herself and said “ I don’t care what he becomes just Oh dear G-d please let me outlive him.” That quote has stayed with me every day since I read it with my tiny infant in my arms. When I send them off to school or camp or even to a friend’s house I say a little silent prayer that they will be safe and live longer than me. It is my biggest fear that some tragedy harms my children and stands in the way of them living a full life. 

I could not accept that this nightmare had been lived by my friend. Her son’s bright personality always came through from what little I saw of him. Stunned, I wrote her straight away and said that I had seen her post. I said I didn’t know what had happened but I was thinking of her. She wrote back with such a direct statement about how and when she lost her boy. She said he had Leukemia and was treated and came out of treatment okay, when he went back a few years later he once again completed treatment and was healthy. They had planned on doing a bone marrow transplant and that is when things went wrong. He got an infection and sepsis. He did not make it and passed away. She wrote these words to me followed by how losing him has been so hard on the three of them and that they are learning to go on. My heart sank as I read her words and I began to cry. My stomach tightened and my head hurt because I couldn’t swallow how unfair this news was. How final! 

I let myself sit for a while before writing her back. I wasn’t even sure how to respond to her devastation. She had asked me when I would be back in NYC next and there will be no excuses to put off seeing her when I go. If I could beam myself to her right now to hug her I would. I went to sit on the couch where my son was sitting. I sat behind him and hugged him so I could breathe him in. He couldn’t see my face, or my tears, but all I could think of was that my friend couldn’t hold her boy anymore. I held on as long as he would let me. I will never let go first. Time is precious.

Left Out

 It is really hard to be a teenage girl. It was not easy for me getting through the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. It is even harder watching my daughter going through them. In addition to just being hard because the age is challenging, adding in today’s social media, text message threads and photos of absolutely everything, there is no way to be oblivious to what your peers are doing around you. 

About a week ago, I was already hormonal when I lifted my phone to scroll Instagram. I should have stuck to the dog videos since they usually lift my mood, but instead I stumbled on a post of my local friends all out to dinner together. They all live in close proximity together, and I am not around the corner so to speak so I understood it was a neighborhood thing, but still I felt left out not to be there. It stung as I looked at the multiple photos of them sitting around a table, posing outside the restaurant, and smiling in every shot. Even though I wasn’t a neighbor I wanted to be part of the group.

My daughter’s first year of high school was bumpy socially. When she started on the first day she felt sure of one thing and that was that she and her best friend from elementary school would be friends forever. She knew she could count on having at least one good friend she could count on. After so much time over the summer together, doing theatre together, and babysitting together what they really needed was probably a break. Instead, they headed into freshman year together and the tight knots of their friendship bracelets started to unravel within the first few weeks. Who knows exactly what happened? Perhaps, one felt threatened that the other was able to make new friends easily. Perhaps, one was holding a grudge for things done months before but because communication wasn’t her strong suit she never spoke up. Perhaps one also turned all of their mutual friends against the other. In any or all of these cases it is not easy for a couple of fourteen year olds to navigate.

I had a realization recently that a friend and I were not as close as I thought we were. We met when our kids were still in preschool. We started them in Kindergarten together. We used to go have lunch here and there, we worked out together, and tried new beauty products together. We had fun and we talked often. Until we didn’t. Things change, situations change, people can change, but I didn't really realize until I was learning things about her from other people. Our texting seemed to slow down, we didn’t go out as much, and although she was always nice when we did speak we weren’t a part of each other’s day to day anymore. It seemed to take me a long time to figure it out, but I finally did and in that one shocking moment when I did, it hurt. It was followed by a sense of relief too. I hadn’t noticed it, but I was working so much harder than she was, and I didn’t have to pull all the dead weight of a non-functioning friendship. I felt sad, but I felt lighter.

Last week my daughter had tentative plans with a group of friends. She had also checked in with two other friends to see if she could hang with them. They told her they were going to be with two guys so it would be awkward if she joined. She never heard definitively from the first group so after waiting to hear from them she went over to a different friend's house. On the way she ran into the two girls who were supposed to be with the two guys, only they were just hanging with another of their girlfriends. It was indeed awkward, but not because they were with two guys, but because they weren’t, and yet they never let her know. My daughter hung out at a different friend’s house but on the way home from that she ran into her other group of friends who never called her back to include her in their evening plans. She was in the car with my husband when they pulled up to a stop sign only to see all of her “friends” with very concrete plans that didn’t include her. They all made eye contact and then my daughter asked my husband to please drive away from this most uncomfortable encounter. 

She was crushed, understandably. Just one of these run-ins would have hurt, but two in one night felt unbearable. I was mad and wanted answers for her. I suggested she talk to the one close friend who kept being vague about plans but she didn’t want to confront anyone. She said she felt she was on shaky ground with everyone in that group because she didn’t hang with them all as consistently as they hung with each other. I cringed as the next day she didn’t reach out to say, “Hey, that didn’t feel great last night, what happened?” text, but instead sent a “hello” as if nothing happened. It has been over a week since then and there has been no response to her friendly text. My daughter is regrouping and she no doubt needs to reevaluate the groups she has been friends with. The thing with groups is it doesn’t seem to matter if you are friends with one or two people in a group when they all get together it can feel really awful being on the outside.

When I saw the photo of a bunch of my friends out together, having fun, laughing in a group without getting to be part of it, I immediately thought of my daughter and all she is going through right now. I shared with her, that I felt left out, but that what she was feeling this past week was probably as bad as it will ever get. I shared that life is full of FOMO, and exclusion, but that it is rarely as in your face as it was for her. I also explained that as hurt as I was, the first person I called when I was sad was one of my best friends. That friend is not in that group and if she was I would never felt excluded in the first place. I listed off for her the friends that I have that only ever make me feel safe, loved and accept me fully for who I am. I explained those friendships take a long time to get right but when you do you hold on for life.

Listen and Nod

 The right words haven’t come together for me yet to be able to explain to my children why certain people are just mean, or that not every system is set up carefully, or that not everything is fair. I have been faced with the challenge of providing this explanation quite a few times now as a parent and I have not successfully come up with an authentic, honest answer that could provide them any insight. The closest answer I can come with is that people do strange things sometimes, it’s part of life, and we have to learn to deal with it.

That response doesn’t make hurt feel any less painful, or injustice seem any more fair. It’s hard to fathom learning for the first time how corrupt history was and how so many people were treated cruelly for so long. It is even harder to watch through your child’s eyes that hate still exists in today’s world. Time has healed a lot of wounds but there are so many deep cuts that continue to bleed. Our children try to absorb everything we teach them, and I try to lead by example, but it is impossible for them to not see on their own the flaws in what is supposed to be equality.

Globally you can’t shield them from the fact that war exists. You teach children about hunger and poverty. We teach about how wrong it is for people to be mistreated for being different but then have to point out often how that still happens. I spent my late teens and my twenties in a group whose mission was to expose racism and antisemitism to other kids around New York City. I recently saw parts of what I did all those years ago and was sad to see how much of the material is still so important to keep teaching today.

I know I am not alone in wanting to teach our children to have an innate sense of gratitude for what we do have, and we have a lot. We are not hungry or poor, we are healthy, and that is not only enough, but also a lot. There is a question looming for me though about how as people we are evolving going forward. With technology drastically changing the way we interact with each other, I can see it daily when most of my children’s friends have trouble making eye contact. When my friend told me that my daughter was the only child at her son’s birthday party who said “thank you” for having her, I didn’t think to myself that I did a good job parenting her. I thought instead, what is happening to people that manners are so rarely taught the same anymore. We all had to live through the pandemic, but our children in important developmental years of their lives were isolated from peers. That has its ramifications and it is hard to ignore how apparent they are now.

This week my tolerance for adult behavior towards children wore thin. A teacher was condescending to my daughter in a way that only a power-hungry adult can be. It was over something small and what could have been a teachable moment if done respectfully, but instead it was patronizing. The only lesson my daughter learned from it was how to steer clear of the way this teacher overreacts. She learned from classmates that this is not an uncommon behavior for this woman, and to nod and agree when she goes off on you. I was upset to see something blown out of proportion and taken out on my daughter, but it made me realize how many horrible teachers I had and survived as a kid. I’ve been reading “Lessons In Chemistry” lately, and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, but I almost couldn’t get past the first few chapters because it takes place in the fifties and women were so mistreated that it was hard to read. I do appreciate where we have made progress. 

My friend also was tested this week by immature adult behavior when her son was left out of a group not because he had any conflict with any of the other kids, but because one of the kid’s fathers held a grudge about his own son’s bad luck. The dad took his misplaced anger out on a different kid. If this makes no sense to you, trust me when I say it is because it makes no sense. People do strange things when they are hurting, and sometimes the easiest thing for them to do is hurt back. It is proven time and time again that this method does not work, but yet it doesn’t cease to occur. It reminds me to remind my children, and myself that we can’t explain everyone else's behavior. All we can do is try to be kind to one another, and show as much grace as we can when things go awry, because they will. We have come so far, but we still have a long way to go, and a lot we can learn.