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.