I Want to be Like My Kids....

You know as your kids are growing up, how you wonder if or when you'll see traits like yours? Not the physical stuff so much, but do they have your sense of humor, or your knack for math or writing or logic or music or do you share a love of sports or art?  Then you might feel that special connection that is so very rare.

Well, I'm experiencing the opposite feeling lately. I'm not looking to see if my kids are like me...I look to see how I can be more like them. As they've blossomed into young womanhood this summer, at 16.5 and 20, they've are the kind of people I only could ever wish or hope to be.

My older daughter is leaving for a semester abroad this coming weekend.  She's just sort of fearlessly going about her planning, making a list of the countries she intends to hit, the places she will see, the things she will do. She doesn't know one other person in her program, will be building a new group of friends from scratch in another country nowhere near her home, an ocean separating her from everything she is used to. I don't know that I ever would have had the courage to do that at 20..maybe not even now, at 46.

My younger daughter worked this summer as a day camp counselor for the first time. She shepherded forty (yes, 40!) sixth graders through a busy day at drama camp, dealing with everything from everyday issues like girl sagas and boy problems and who got the best part in the camp show to meatier, thornier issues like kids with body image issues and emotional issues and family issues and a co counselor who quit midway through the summer.  She handled it all not only with grace but with a sort of adult-like view that I wasn't even aware she had developed.  I could never have been as she was, calm, cool, under so much pressure at that age -- and she LOVED it.  She hopes to be asked back next year as a counselor again.

So how did this work out -- me getting the kids I never could imagine being but would love to have been, and me getting the joyous reward of watching them be this way?  I don't know...but I'm sure glad I did.

Depression is not just a Bummer

"I'm depressed," we tend to lament pretty easily on any given day or week -- at least I know I've done this. Maybe we're low on funds in our checking account or we didn't get something we wanted or the dishwasher is on the fritz -- again. But with the suicide of Robin Williams earlier this week, I can't help but think we've lost the meaning of this very important word -- depression.

Depression is not just a bummer. It's not that blip in your day or your week. It's not that you don't have enough money to go to dinner with your friends, or that your car needs $500 worth of repairs or that you have to make due with last winter's coat. Yet every day we utter the words I'm depressed about these sometimes small or annoying or frustrating things.

Perhaps we should save the word depression for true, serious depression. Just so that we can honor and acknowledge what it is.

For people who've never been depressed, it's hard to imagine the truly gray pallor that seeps over the life of the depressed person all the time. I once read an article about a woman who was so desperate to get out of her decades-long depression that she allowed her doctor to perform experimental brain surgery to try to figure out exactly where in the brain the depression was coming from. As he touched various parts of her brain -- while she was awake, no less -- she was to tell him if she noticed anything different.  And at one point, she did. "Who turned the lights up?" she asked. She felt the pall lift.

People with depression don't want to be depressed. They also just can't snap out of it. They can't enjoy the things you and I enjoy -- the movies or a good meal or time with friends and family. They don't understand that you want them to live when the depression tells them not to. They don't understand how it will hurt you if the depression tells them to end their life. They are not being selfish. They are suffering beyond what any of us can imagine.

We need to live in a world where it's okay to talk about depression and what it really means. We need to live in a world where it's okay to be depressed, and no one will tell you just stop. And let's decide to live in a world where we don't say that we're depressed when we're just having a bit of a bummer of a day. Let's honor depression for everything it is. And everything we wish it wasn't.

Paying it Forward

When I graduated from college twenty four years ago (gulp!) my parents gave me ten shares of IBM stock as a gift.  (My father was a lifetime employee.)  I really didn't think about it at the time, just put it away and forgot about it.

Until two years ago. That's when my older daughter was entering college.  We had saved for her to go, diligently putting money into a 529 every month since she was just a little girl and barely reading. It was hard to believe, back then, that she would ever go to college. She was still wearing a size small dress and was scared of dogs.

But grow up she did. And during her senior year of high school, as she applied to college, my husband and I knew that even with that diligent saving, we were far behind where we needed to be to make up the difference. We knew that we would need to pay for eight semesters of college for her, and then turn around with no break and pay for eight semesters for our younger daughter. And every year, college tuition, room, and board jumps about four per cent. So where was the rest of the money coming from?

I remembered the stock.  My husband and I decided we should sell some of it. I didn't know how many shares the ten had morphed into, but I figured, it was something at least. So little by little over the last two years, we've drained that account, filling in the deficit we face every August and December when we need to make a payment.

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail that the account was closed. Apparently we've used those entire ten shares up (and whatever they've morphed into) this week. I was a little sad -- we'd held onto that stock for twenty four years, after all! -- but mostly, I thought it was so cool. My college graduation gift had gone to pay for my daughter's college education.  What could be a better way to spend it? Now, just to get through the rest of college payments without it. . . .

Are the Teen Years Carefree?

I was talking with a group of friends recently about whether teenagers are carefree. A couple of people thought teenagers could be, and are, carefree. Two of the mothers of teens in the group insisted that their own teen years had been completely carefree.

I'm going to be honest -- I don't buy it.

The teen years are some of the most stressful years of a person's life, in my opinion.  It's not that you can't have fun; sure, there are fun times. There are dances and parties and friends who matter and conquering hard subjects and visiting college campuses and learning to drive. But there's so much more than that.

There's going through puberty.  There are mean girls and boys. There's gossip. There are first kisses and boyfriends and girlfriends and getting dumped and falling in and out of love. There's the need to get high grades and ace the SATs.  There are teachers who suck the life out of you and a school day that starts before your body and brain are biologically ready to start. There are parents who nag you, rules that don't make sense. There's the very point that adolescence is a time of great change, and in every great time of change, even our happiest, like when we get married or have a baby, there is inevitable stress.

It's not all on the surface, either. Even the happiest, most contended, apparently well-adjusted teens struggle with feelings of identity, and there are not all conscious thoughts. Who am I and why am I here? Is it better to be a child or an adult?  What do I want to do with my life?  What am I good at? What am I not good at?

I have yet to meet a teen who has never had a blip of misery throughout his or her teen years.  It may look all cushy, with parties, and friends, and summers off from school, but to me, being a teen is one of the most difficult things you can be. What do you think?

The Most Valuable Summer Job

My daughter is working a few jobs this summer, saving for her semester abroad in the fall.  One is a paid internship where she's learning about non profits, writing, communications, graphics, event planning, volunteerism, and all those good things.  One job is driving a disabled man to and from his school and group home. One is babysitting two young children each evening for a few hours between their camp time and the time their parents get home. Which do you think is the most valuable?

I bet a lot of you would pick the one in the office.  At first glance, that makes the most sense. She's working in an professional environnment. She's picking up business contacts. She's working on important projects. She's learning about what life will be for her in two years -- if she decides not to continue on with graduate study after college -- or three years -- if she finishes her graduate degree -- and she enters the work force.

But I don't pick job number one. I also don't pick the job two -- it's great that she's helping this disabled young man -- and his parents are friends of ours -- and she's making a little extra money, but this is only a couple of days a week and really is all about the driving.

Yes, I pick job number 3.

In this job, my daughter's seeing a lot of actual life right in front of her. Both parents are professionals with high powered jobs. They live and work within a couple of mile radius, and they have two young children about eighteen months apart in age.

My daughter is seeing what happens when you have a two career family. She's seeing the parents basically always trying to keep their two kids' care straightened out. They drop their little ones off early for day care/camp and then my daughter picks them up at 5:00.  She brings them home, cooks them dinner, tries to work with them in the work books their mother wants them to use during the summer when school's not in session, plays with them for a bit, and bathes them.  Their harried mother or exhausted father comes home anytime between 6:30 and 9:00, when the children are ready for bed or already asleep.

In between, they touch base with my daughter throughout the day. Is this one going to be home early enough to bring the kids to their t-ball game?  Is that parent able to pay my daughter for the week? Who will get the extra car seats out of her car for the weekend?  Who has the longer day? How long will they get to see their kids for that evening?

My daughter grew up in a very different household.  When she was very young, I worked half time in New York, half time from home, and I remember the frantic feeling when the babysitter called at 5:00 am after her son had gotten sick overnight and we couldn't figure out who was going to stay home; how guilty I felt when I didn't cook dinner because I was too tired when I got home, and the myriad of details about basic life that I worried about all the time.  When my daughter was three, I left my job, pregnant with my second girl, knowing I needed it.  I was fortunate, and I'm clear about that. However tight we've been financially all these years, at least I had a choice.

I never felt as impassioned about my career as I did about raising my children. Some of that may have been the time I was raised in, or how I feel about work and life in general, or a whole other host of factors, but for me, the two simply weren't going to mesh.  For so many others, this issue is age-old, and now as my daughter prepares to become an adult in the world, she's having to ask herself, or at least think about, what she wants and how she might go about getting it.  She says she definitely wants children, but she also definitely wants a career.  She will work hard over the next however many years to establish that career, and then a time may come when she is ready for children. It's how to blend the two that will come into play.

That's what this babysitting job is very handy for. She's seeing first hand that something will likely have to give. Will it be her sanity? Will it be the children? Will she wait and hold off on kids so she can enjoy a career first? Will she have them and hire someone full time to care for them, and then, will she be the kind of mother she plans on being?  Will she have two kids instead of three, or one instead of two? Will she career for a while and then stay at home for a while and then career again? Will it be okay if she misses t-ball games or that she won't see her kids for more than a few minutes some days? That's what this job is teaching her. Everything will come down to choices, and some will be choices she won't like to make.

I support whatever she chooses to do -- work outside the home, work inside the home, career, no career, kids, no kids....I've got her back.  But I do feel badly for her: the choices she will make, as a modern woman with a career and a family (if she decides to go that route) will sometimes be painful or agonizing. They are not decisions I've had to grapple with in a long time.  I don't know the answers.

Some Dates You Just Don't Forget

Today is my high school boyfriend's birthday. He is 48.

I haven't seen him in twenty five years, not spoken in twenty, but I still think of him fondly, and always on his birthday. We dated for about three years after we met at music camp one summer. We went to separate high schools and lived in towns thirty minutes away.  We had a "trunk line" on the "teen phones" in our homes because we didn't want to pay the outrageous long distance bills talking for hours every night racked up. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

The break up was typical -- months of on and off, push and pull, until it ended in that ugly way teen romances seem to end. Badly.

I wasn't the best high school girlfriend; I know that now. I was demanding and pushy and wanted him to give up a lot of what he loved for me. I wanted to spend every weekend with him (and after he started driving, that was pretty easy) and I wanted...well, everything  I tried to give back as much as I gave, and I did love him. He was sweet and funny and taught me a lot about how to be a nice person. I'm afraid, though, that I was not equally as good to him as he was to me.  In the end, frankly, I was just plain awful.

Still, after college, we chatted a bit, he even came to my wedding. (See, wonderful guy, right?) But we never remained friends, which I suspect is my fault.  I am Facebook friended with his sister, and we had lunch a few months back, and it was so nice to catch up with her. I feel like I still know his family, so I enjoy stories about his relatives (creepy, right?), though we really didn't talk about him.  His sister and I have a bit in common, too, and it's funny now to be friendly with her when, as high-schoolers (the two were only seventeen months apart) they fought bitterly and often, and my boyfriend complained all the time about her hysterics and drama, so we were anything but friends, then.

I probably sound like a crazy, insane stalker. I'm not, though. I'm happily married to my best friend/husband, have two healthy, happy daughters, and a writing life.  I feel lucky to be where I am, and I don't ever look back and think What if,what if?  I just think, Oh, I hope he's well. I hope he's happy. I hope life has been good to him. And I admit that I also sometimes wish I could apologize to him for being the psycho girlfriend.  It's thirty years later, and I'm still sorry.

Separating

There comes a time in a baby's development when she begins to realize she's not truly just part of her mother but that she's an independent person, that she is her own entity.

I'm beginning to feel like this.

For the last twenty years, I've been a mother before everything else. In the very beginning of motherhood, I was a working outside-of-the-home mom.  I juggled a career as an editor and had a young daughter, before Internet, before email...dragging large manuscripts between my work and home in a sturdy bag, working from home some days, in the office on others.  It became clear to me when I was pregnant with my younger daughter that I wouldn't be able to do both, at least for a while. My husband and I weren't sure if we would be able to afford life on one salary but we decided the wear and tear on my was too much...almost exactly seventeen years ago, I quit my job.  We decided we would re evaluate after a year. . .

Year turned into year turned into year and I became a dedicated stay-at-home mother. Most everything I've done, even though I'm also a writer and a friend and like to go to movies and out for dinner, to discuss politics and social issues, and to read, has been about my daughters. I was active in their elementary school activities.  Then we transitioned into the tough teen years, with me being available for every time they needed to talk, or to think out loud, to drive them to activities, to advise them on classes, to pick them and their friends up, and then teaching them to drive themselves....and now, it's almost over.

Yesterday I took a day to be not-a-mom.  An author friend and I went into the city to a book launch, where people we knew were celebrating the publication of their book.  We had lunch,we walked around, we met people we had only social media-ed with. Of course I thought about my kids, but my pressing thoughts were not about where to be to pick one up or how to help one through a crisis or school or...anything, but writing and reading and books. I felt like an entirely different person.

My older daughter is home for college for the summer; the younger is going into her Junior year of high school.  In just a couple of short years, daughter number 1 will be launched, fully, and daughter number 2 will separate herself to college.  I'll still be their mom, but I won't be the appendage I am now.  But I'll be a person.  And a writer. And someone I may, some days, not recognize.