It’s hard to be the mother of a 14 year old girl. The demands, the expectations. Most of the time we do fine. But when we fight, finding out that she and I share certain traits is not the most useful or comforting of discoveries. Like the stubbornness and the pride; the immediate silence into which we each take refuge.
I do not mind being her chauffeur, the role to which I’ve been reduced these days, that and the expectation to spit out money as she requires it and the provider of as many yeses as she needs to go about to the mall or the movies or wherever with her friends.
I don’t mind the tedious waiting for her. I have my smartphone, my music and my e-reader to keep me entertained in my car while she takes her tap class or her hip hop or whatever interest she’s pursuing.
I want her to have fun and to enjoy the relationships she’s creating with other girls. I want her to have that sense of belonging and being with and like them, no matter how fleeting all these relationships will end up being.
Her insistence in being and doing like others is a strange phase, I think. I do not know when she will leave that behind in order to assert who she truly is. To acknowledge that the more unique you are, the better, quirks and all.
But the two things that bother me the most are these: to catch her in a lie, no matter how innocent, turns me inside out. I can’t tolerate that she thinks she has to hide the truth from me.
I also find that I can’t handle her intellectual laziness, and her lack of self-awareness about the privileged position she is in. The skill to read in three languages is not something we all have. When she asks me when she will stop taking her French lessons, I respond, “When I see you reading French books with no other purpose than enjoyment!” Her silence is her response. Lately, she even has stopped reading any of her English-language books.
The other day I was about to ground her by taking her phone away for a week. After many tears and end of the world drama, we finally agreed she would read a book in Spanish over the summer. She was so happy to have her lifeline back in her grubby hand! Now the task at hand for her is pretty daunting. I will admit to that. I had hoped we could do it together in the course of a year because it’s a fat book. She has committed herself to reading on her own and in Spanish, before the new school starts, the book to which I introduced myself to world literature: Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.
I wish upon her a mind overflowing with unending questions and curiosity. Yeah, maybe it’s too early for her to wonder about the universe and our social past and to know the importance of questioning everything. But I can’t stand the idea that she will have no intellectual hunger, and that she won’t always have her nose in a book.
