Have you ever stolen a glance at one of your kids while she’s in the midst of an activity – a routine, unexceptional activity – and felt a love so intense it takes your breath away?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to experience such overwhelming feelings very frequently. When that rare pang hits, it takes me a minute before I realize what’s happening.
I’m feeling topsy-turvy. It is the afternoon of March 31 as I write this post, and large wet snowflakes are falling to the ground. It felt like spring this morning, it really did. I took Truffle to the dog park and for the first time this year did not feel uncomfortably cold as I watched him romp with his friends. Alas, the spring tease was not to last. A mere few hours later, it’s barely 40° outside.
ARRRRRRRRRGH.
Continue reading Spring Has Yet to Spring, But Optimism Reigns
Many parents bemoan their teenagers’ moody personalities and ungrateful, complainer-puss attitudes. I am no different – I joined that club years ago, long before Chloe was even officially a teen (she’s always been precocious in that way). Chloe drives me batty sometimes. It’s the job of these half-children half-beasts, isn’t it, to drive their parents batty?
Setting the Scene
I’ve discovered that watching movies with Chloe and Sophie is a great way to reassure myself during times of doubt that my girls are actually sentient humans who are capable of feeling compassion and empathy for others.
I have recently learned the hard way, however, that Sophie is more likely to feel compassion and empathy for other animals than for her fellow homo sapiens. It’s not that she doesn’t like people. It’s just that, with the exception of ants, she loves other mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and invertebrates more.
It’s a cold, snowy, icy mess outside, not unlike the night 15 years ago when my father suddenly died of a heart attack. The world had just survived Y2K without any major apocalypse, but our small family wasn’t to be spared. Little did we know that our universe would be irrevocably altered barely six weeks into the new millennium.
Chloe is 14. Chloe is 14. Chloe is 14.
I’ve been repeating that short factual sentence to myself for days now, getting used to the sound of it. It’s strange. Although it’s not a particularly momentous birthday, it feels like a bigger deal than it really is.
I don’t know why I feel this way. On the one hand, I’m happy. Chloe is healthy and content. She has made it through her first full year as a teenager and hasn’t yet turned into a monster. Maybe we’ll survive the years of Teenageddon after all, I muse.
It was time to put my foot down. Sick of my girls’ too-frequent requests for stuff, I recently put my serious mom hat on to announce a new house rule. “Chloe and Sophie,” I said, “you must start distinguishing between your needs and wants. Your mom and Papa do not possess an orchard full of money trees,” I added as the two girls rolled their eyes in perfect unison. We don’t live in a French Renaissance castle, either, although our humble abode is about 100 years old (and often feels like it was built 500 years ago, too).
My heart belongs to France. I dream of living there again one day – when Chloe and Sophie are adults and independently making their way in the world, and my husband and I have retired. I wouldn’t require much – a modest apartment in Paris, within walking distance to a park, a decent boulangerie, a vibrant open-air market and a métro stop.
After the events of last week, however, I feel bereft. I wonder if my dream will always remain just that – a dream about a place I’ve continued to idealize because of the magical memories it holds for me. It’s the place where I met my husband as an undergraduate student, where I lived and worked after college, where I married, where the entirety of my husband’s family still lives and where my imagination wanders when my home here in the U.S. just isn’t all that it’s cut out to be.
At the end of the month, Chloe will celebrate her 14th birthday. She remains relatively amiable and hasn’t yet entirely forsaken the family unit in search of greener pastures with her friends. I count myself lucky that she still wants to spend time with us, even if she has taken to spending more solitary hours in her girl-woman cave, aka her bedroom.
I’ve started to notice other subtle changes in our interactions, too. We still talk, but not as often as we used to. She’ll arrive home from school and spend five minutes answering my questions and ingesting a second lunch before retiring to her lair until her stomach tells her it’s almost dinner time and she yells, “Mom, when are we eating? What are we having?”
