I often envy the parenting style of the 80’s and 90’s.
Helicoptering was never a thing I intended, and yet, sometimes, I feel like here I am.
I’m not sure how I got to the point of thinking I had to micromanage all of my teenager’s plans, whereabouts, and decisions, but I think many moms of teenagers know that sometimes you look at them,
unable to cook more than toast at 16 years old,
or with no knowledge of bacterial growth, or how the dryer works,
and suddenly a certain panic starts to set in.
I feel like if I don’t watch them closely they might burst into flames.
I far too often picture them in a ditch.
I don’t know where I got this hovering notion.
My parents didn’t even know where I was for at least 4 years.
They’d watch me leave on my banana seat, with no way of beckoning me back home again.
Yet, somehow I’ve nearly pulled out my own hair for the last three years over my two teenage daughters.
(Granted, they are gorgeous, and there are scary things like sex trafficking out there)
Maybe it’s that I have binged years worth of murder podcasts in just the last two months while I have been driving, and now I know too much.
Maybe it’s just the burden of being the type of person that pays attention as closely as the FBI does at any given moment.
All I know is that there is no stranger eyeballing my daughters in Target that I haven’t made mental note of, and thoroughly evaluated.
“Be advised, Sir, that I am also an artist.
I can easily produce a police sketch.”
It’s hard sometimes to walk the line, though, of just trying to keep them safe,
and trying to control them.
I remember the pressures of very strict parents, who dictated exactly how I answered the phone, and how long my nails were allowed to be.
I promised myself I’d see past certain trivial issues, and get to the heart of things more than they did.
It has become highly important to me to raise these four very different girls as individuals.
I want them to know I see them for who they really are,
and not just the versions of them I’ve created in my own head.
But, oh, this is hard to do. So much shifting gears!
What deeply affects one daughter, another just shrugs their shoulders and smirks at.
I see their childhoods swiftly fading, and I feel like I’m suddenly grasping at frayed ends.
Is it too late to save them? Too late to teach them?
Will they remember to hold up their own chins?
Of all of the aspects of motherhood, this has been my most challenging yet:
How to know when to press in, and when to back off.
I have found it only gets harder the older they get.
I sat with one of my daughters this week in the driveway for an hour, as rain drenched and blurred the windshield.
How fitting that we couldn’t see beyond our own two seats there…
Mothering a teenage daughter so often feels like you’ cannot see to the outside;
Like all that exists is just the issue in the air, the silence, you and them.
She was begging me to let go of a thing I really think still needs to be held onto.
She wants so much to be seen as capable, and independent.
She wants so much to be seen as a woman,
but when I look at her, I cannot help it. I just see a little girl with the same naiveties and bright eyes that she always had.
I remember when it was my own mother in the driver’s seat,
and it was our blurry windshield.
I remember being the girl begging for wiggle room, a taste of freedom,
but now even though I can’t see what’s past us with my eyes, I know what is waiting out there.
It scares me to let go.
Sometimes the what-ifs call out so loudly I can’t hear anything else.
But, this is the plight of mothers:
We know what could be coming, but we cannot always save them.
Some lessons are only learned through pain, and its recovery.
Some losses just have to be felt.
Do I want nothing to ever happen to her because nothing ever happened to her?
I saw it then.
I heard it past the rain pounding.
I sat in that car, and I mothered myself.
Later on, I recounted the story of that moment to my therapist.
We always end our sessions with a reading from the aptly named “The Language of Letting Go” by Melody Beattie. (Excellent. Highly recommend)
It is a book of daily readings aimed at recovery from all types of vices, shedding codependency, aimed at self-care, and better mental health.
Normally I turn to a random date with a title that jumps out at me.
Maybe it’s the rebellious teenager still in me, too, or just my dad in me, even,
but I’m not the type that is bound to feeling the need to follow the exact date that it says.
On this particular day, I turned to November 30th, to the section called simply “Detachment.”
I had no idea what it would be about, but I guess I’ve been craving to know how a person should go about stepping back from the only phase in life they have ever dreamed of, so
that word spoke to me.
I’ve only ever thought about motherhood.
I never imagined that anything could ever come next.
The reading was about this woman whose son wanted a gerbil, and though she did not want to get one, she gave in.
Months into owning this thing she didn’t want in the first place, the gerbil escaped, and for months she and that son dove and dug, screamed and chased that gerbil trying to recapture it to no avail.
The pursuit was making her go crazy.
She had torn her own house apart trying to capture it.
It was a thing they did every day, until one day she decided she was just done with chasing it, and she gave herself over to just letting that gerbil be free, and have its way with her house.
Many days after that, she would simply watch as the gerbil ran back and forth, free, as the family went about their life.
No sooner had she given up on ever having a normal home, however, than that gerbil ran out and stood in front of her, blinking as she just sat there, as if it had waited for this very moment.
Calmly, she sat up and held her hand out to it.
Equally calmly, that gerbil simply climbed in.
It was only after she decided to stop the chasing that peace returned to her home,
and she got her life back again.
I closed the book and just sat thinking:
I’ve been frantically diving and squealing and chasing, but
she had stopped fighting the gerbil,
and in that lies today’s teenage mothering lesson:
Sometimes we just have to let go of trying to control every outcome of our life and their life.
It really couldn’t be any plainer than that.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
