How I am Parenting my Teen

It started when I sat on the bleachers alone watching my daughter learn the game of softball. She had introduced herself to new teammates with her first and middle initials. Her dad, my new ex, stood near the dugout on the coaching staff. There were still a lot of adjustments to make in our new lives.

These little girls couldn’t hit the coach-pitched balls. They sometimes threw the ball, but almost never caught one. On the rare occasions when a ball made it to the outfield, the players had no idea what to do now.

It was painful to watch. It was hard for me to stay focused on the field. I was easily distracted by the side conversations of other spectators or the antics of younger siblings biding their time. I brought my security blanket--a book. Maybe I could read a paragraph between innings.

I was a reluctant sports mom. I knew this was good for her, but I’d worked all day, and just wanted to go home and curl up with a book. Why wasn’t I raising a bookworm? I had book recommendations out the wazoo. I didn’t know a thing about softball. I clapped when the other parents clapped. Sometimes I clapped for the other team by mistake. I was self-conscious about all I didn’t know and didn’t want to embarrass my girl, so I rarely cheered aloud cautious not to say the wrong thing.

As the season progressed, the standing around at bases continued, and very little action took place. Thoughts of impatience and boredom would begin to swirl. Then one day, a new idea formed. I could consider these too-long games as a form of meditation. Each time I felt a deep sigh of annoyance or loneliness or confusion, I could close my mouth and breathe through my nose, and exhale slowly. Release the tension of the moment. Release the boredom and the impulse to look at my phone.

The strategy worked. It short circuited the irritation and brought me back to the moment. More often, I was looking in the right places when my daughter waved from the dugout or made it to first base.

In those days, I couldn’t imagine the joy of watching her one day hit into the outfield, make the outfield scramble for the ball, and for her to make it to second base.

Now I am parenting a teen and the issue isn’t too little action on the field. Now I’m trying to parent a girl in constant motion. The mouth is always speaking. The brain is always planning the next activity. There are daily requests or suggestions for how she could spend another 20 of my dollars.

I felt the familiar deep sighs of aggravation return. The same desire to curl up with a book. Eventually, the same mantra came to mind: you could make parenting her a form of meditation. When I feel tempted to react to her teen nonsense, I close my mouth and breathe. This tactic spares us both an unnecessary escalation of emotion, prevents words being uttered that most assuredly will not help.

Parenting as a form of meditation keeps me in the present and prevents me from wishing she was immediately 18. I don’t want to huff and puff through her adolescence, and I want her to keep talking to me. We need those lines of communication to remain open, smooth, unkinked by my impatience or dismissiveness.

Just like on the bleachers when I couldn’t imagine what a “real” softball game would one day look like, I can’t envision the ways my teen will move us through the next five years. I want to be ready. I want my eyes focused in the right direction. I want my girl to see that I am watching, caring, trusting and encouraging her forward. I want to be thoughtful when I choose to speak. I want to say the right words at the right time.

Meditating my way through gives us the best chance at getting us both to her adulthood in one piece. 

Rules of Civility - a book experience

Last Saturday, I woke up with day two of a nasty migraine. The day before I’d worked through it, but barely sitting up in bed. I felt nauseous most of the day. It was awful. I took the prescription again on Saturday and knew that my job was to be still and wait out the storm in my head.

I picked up my latest library pick, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles and quickly was transported to New Year’s Eve, New York, 1937. I’ve spent the week trying to figure out how to write about this book, and this morning it came to me: I am not a book reviewer. What I am interested in telling you is my experience of the books I read. My blog, my rules, yes?

I have a funny habit for a writer who wants readers to read not one, but all of the books she one day publishes. Sometimes when I love the first book I read of an author’s, I’m nervous to read another. Such was the case with choosing Rules of Civility. Last December, I read A Gentleman in Moscow, Towles’ second book. Ten months later, I’m still thinking about it, missing the characters and the scenes he so adeptly created.

In my effort to live lightly, my bookshelves are sparse. They do not adequately exhibit the role books play in my life. I am a local library devotee, and I’m determined to get most of my books from there. Generally I can LOVE a book and not feel the need to OWN it. A Gentleman in Moscow is in a different category. I feel the need to have it on my shelf, to pick up on a whim and read snippets whenever I feel like it. I haven’t bought it yet, but I know I will one of these days.

All of this rambling to say, choosing to open Rules of Civility felt risky. I consider his second book a masterpiece. Was it possible that he could write two?

I devoured Rules of Civility in two days. I am drawn to the healing power of fiction, and this book did the trick. There were twists and turns, well-drawn characters, great dialogue, and the language—Amor Towles enveloped me in his command of English. I opened my journal and copied down phrases and passages because they were so good, so descriptive. Reading his work is a master class.

I had moments where I thought, my novel reads like a See Dick run book for children. In my head my prose sounds like Amor’s, but I can’t execute like he does. Yet. But mostly, his writing inspires me to keep chipping away. My novel isn’t supposed to sound like his. It’s supposed to sound like mine. It does and it will. Here are a few more words to describe his work: exquisite, elegant, textured, effortless. Those are attributes I am working my way toward in my own prose.

The other reason I’m taken with this writer is because the book jacket says he has a day job. He does something completely different during his working hours. Investments or some such. His work and writing dispel the fantasy that you have to have a lot of time to devote to writing. That may be the biggest takeaway from pandemic life: time is not the issue. I have plenty of it, and I still don’t get things done until I commit to doing them. Just like in 2015. I devoted my early mornings to writing, and I amassed more than 80,000 words.

This is what I find so fascinating about books. These are all the thoughts I had while reading a book about the upper echelons of New York society in the 1930s, friendship, and how accidents change our lives in countless, unforeseen ways. These thoughts have nothing to do with the story, and yet the story was the scaffolding on which I climbed around reorienting myself with my goals and aspirations. And if you decided to pick up this book, (which I highly recommend you do) who knows what its elements would draw out for you?

If you check out Rules of Civility, let me know what you think.

Stuff Keeps Breaking

The latest thing in my house to break is the light fixture above the mirror in the half-bath off the kitchen. A few months ago, I looked up and the opaque flower thing that encases the bulb had slipped down and was hanging precariously on the bulb itself. I removed the burned out bulb, and set the glass piece in a cabinet in my laundry room. Two bulbs still worked. I’ll show it to my dad next time he’s in town, I thought at the time.

One recent morning before school my teen, who applies her mascara at that mirror, flipped the switch and whined. “Mom, something’s wrong with the light. You need to fix it.”

What I am finding strange about this pandemic era we’re living in is that while it seems I’ve got nothing but time, I still find it hard to get things done. The teen faced the dark for several mornings before I remembered I needed to do something about it. 

I pulled up the white Target step stool I’d purchased during our toilet training days that remained in the half-bath. I started to change the bulbs. The first one came out and a new one went in without incident. The third one posed a challenge. Somehow the bulb would not twist out of the socket. I leaned in underneath the bulb to try to get a sense of what was going on. I looked back at the only one still functioning. Minutes later I was able to free the bulb from its encasing. Now there are two bulbs missing. The teen can resume make up application, and nothing made of glass threatens to fall on our heads. 

I wish I could complete the repair, but in the past five years of solo homeownership, I have come to accept my limitations. I need help, and we’re living through a pandemic. More than ever, I’ve got to be choosy about the things I ask for help, and a light fixture doesn’t fit the bill. 

I forgot about these limitations this week as I unboxed the contents of the teen’s new IKEA platform bed. I forgot that four years ago, it took three college-educated adults (one with a graduate degree) to assemble my bed, and mine didn’t have any drawers!

For four days, I worked at my lap top in my assembled bed, and then commuted out my door at the end of the day, took a left turn in the hallway and walked into my daughter’s bedroom where the latest lesson lay before me in about three hundred pieces.  There on the floor, I spent no fewer than two hours a night, replaying a YouTube video of how to assemble the bed, sighing copiously, cursing under my breath, and fighting waves of despair and loneliness. The teen’s own sighs and sass about the bed not being done “YET?” did not help.

On the fourth night, our house guest took a break from her PhD, and offered a hand. Quickly, she confirmed that this was a complicated build made trickier by the poorly labeled instructions and imprecise fittings of the materials. We divided up the tasks. At one point I asked, “Which do you think is harder your PhD or this bed?” She laughed, and we kept at it.

Her presence was a balm and just the boost I needed to make it to the finish line. Together, we were able to prepare the bed for sleeping. The drawers remain unassembled, but in time, I’ll get those done too.

This season of life, thrown up against the scary backdrop of a global pandemic, is teaching me to do what I can and to be okay with unfinished business. At an earlier trip to IKEA, I found an affordable replacement light fixture to put in the place of the current chandelier in my dining room. We have moved the dining room table out of the room, and so there’s a real danger of banging our heads on the chandelier if we’re moving mindlessly through the room. I called my dad for some verbal coaching about how to replace it, but over the conversation, I decided this job is above my paygrade, and I am content to keep the dog bed under the light to help spare our heads the next bump.

Until it’s safe to welcome more people into my home, I’m going to be okay with projects I can’t complete on my own. I’m going to keep chipping away at the things I can, and not write a false narrative about what it means that I can’t do it alone, and need help. I’m not weak or dumb. I’m one person who is patient, values the long game, and wants to do things right the first time. If that means waiting until my handy parents or sister or friends can help me, so be it. I am learning how resilient and resourceful I am, and we usually don’t learn things like that about ourselves when the going is good. 

Stuff keeps breaking. I accept the things I cannot fix. I have the courage to fix what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Serenity.