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.

When Perfect People Turn Out Not to be Perfect

A reader once commented to me that one of the hard parts of The Opposite of Normal, for her, was reading about the rabbi and some of his failures as a parent. (I don't think this is giving anything away if you haven't read the book yet!)  She was bothered by the idea that she had such high ideals about rabbis, and she didn't like to think of them as not being "perfect" or at least, shining, in an area they are supposed to guide us in, like parenting.

Recently, someone I trusted to be, maybe not perfect, but certainly someone I thought was on my side, who I looked up to, surprised me with doing something I thought was wrong.  Now, while I didn't expect her to be perfect (or maybe I did), I did expect something other than I got when we were dealing with a thorny issue.  

It's hard when there are people in your life who you greatly admire and you find out they are not always so admirable, but it happens to all of us, I think. This isn't the first time I've been disappointed by someone I've always looked up to or admired, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

It's important for me to remember that no one is perfect.  Even our strongest leaders, people whose opinions we value, people who are supposed to be our greatest examples -- parents and grandparents and teachers and clergy and doctors -- they are all fallible. When we put our head in the sand about their imperfections, we hurt ourselves.  I was hurt by this person I thought was on my side, and turned out, kind of wasn't, but I learned from it.  I reminded myself not to be so one hundred per cent trustworthy of some people. I usually have good instincts, and I need to be a little more wary, I suppose, because while I have good instincts, I can put all my trust in some people when I shouldn't.

I hope my reader learned from The Opposite of Normal that yes, rabbis make mistakes, even in their own families, and that's okay. And I learned from my experience. Imperfection is perfectly reasonable. Perfection is not.

Impatience!

I am an impatient person.  I've never been good at waiting for something to happen, waiting for people to do what they say they will do, waiting for the next step in a process.

Two things have helped my impatience: Motherhood and being an Author.

Everything in the publishing world works at a snail's pace.  Finding an agent, getting an offer from a publishing house, receiving the contract, and the actual publication of the book all generally take months and years.  As an indie author, I bypass a lot of this stuff, but I can't avoid certain aspects of the process.

I finished my new manuscript last week.  When I say finished, I mean, the first draft, plus my own first edit, are both done.  I've decided on a title -- The Place We Say Goodbye -- and I'm feeling good about it. The next steps are hearing from the beta readers and my editor's work.

I sent my manuscript off to three beta readers last week. Beta readers are the people you choose to ready an early version and then give you honest feedback about your manuscript to make sure it is working the way it's supposed to.  Who you choose as beta readers can change from manuscript to manuscript and indeed mine do. I try to find people who are heavy readers in my particular genre and who may have more than a passing knowledge of my topic.  Of course, none of my beta readers gets paid, and I'm so grateful to them for being willing to read for free; I know they all have other jobs and families and lives; they are doing me a huge favor. I expect that it will take them a while to read for me. Still, though, I get antsy the minute I send the manuscript out. Now I have nothing.  

I try hard to fill the time. I read more than usual. I try to sleep a little later. I bake. I work on the book's blurb -- those few paragraphs that will try to sell the book for me. I think, in the most general terms, about my next book. I should look at this time as special. My brain is getting a break from thinking about my characters and my plot and who is going to do what next and how I'm going to solve their problems.  But instead, I just feel, well, impatient.

I know two of my readers haven't even started the manuscript yet. I don't blame them. As I said, they are busy. But part of me wants to go to their houses (which would be hard to do since one lives several states away and the other lives on the other side of the country) and shake them and sit there and force them to read.  Of course, I am calm and cool and collected when they tell me it might be "awhile" until they start or they will get to it "soon." I smile and nod and say yes, of course I understand, take all the time you need.

Then I sigh and go try to entertain myself with something else.

Celebrating 20: Getting Out of the Teen Years

Our society likes to choose some birthdays as more important than others. We fixate on 1 (for the parents more than the kids -- Yay, you've kept your baby alive for a year!) 13, (You're a teenager! -- Why this is something to celebrate is beyond me!) 18, (the age of majority), 21, (the age when you can drink legally), 25, (It sounds grown up), 30, (Your childhood is over), and then every round numbered birthday after that -- 40, 50, 60, and so on. We also like 65 (the beginning of senior citizenship) and anytime a person survives long enough to be 80, 90, or 100. My aunt is turning 80 next week.  I couldn't find one funny You've made it to 80 card.  They were all somber, like, great, you survived thus far but now you're practically dead.

But I want to focus on another special number that none of us seems to think about. 20. That's right, TWENTY. Twenty is sandwiched between 18 (You are now able to vote, be sentenced as an adult, get married, play the lottery, and a few other things) and 21 (You may now get your liquor from a bartender, as opposed, to, say, your dorm friends.)  Twenty, as far as I can tell, is overlooked, and for no good reason.

My older daughter is turning twenty next week. I'm planning on celebrating big.

Twenty indicates the teen years have come to an end.

Though the teen years technically start at thirteen, they definitely pre-start, for girls at least, around 11, maybe 11 and a half, definitely by 12.  Somewhere in there, your daughter begins to think you know nothing, that she knows everything, that spending an afternoon at the mall is better than spending it with you, that her phone is somehow her most important possession. (Okay, maybe as adults we continue to think that.) So by twenty, you've now been through nearly a decade of this, not to mention raging hormones, contemplating what you want to do the rest of your life, college applications, the drama of middle school (UGH!) and the drama of high school (UGH! again).

Being a teenager sounds pretty cool when you're twelve. I remember thinking I was hot stuff as I went from 12 to 13. But then...being a teenager goes on for far too long.  You're a teenager forever. You've shed more tears than you can ever remember doing before. You've learned to drive (and maybe crashed the car). You've made (sometimes) unreasonable demands on your parents and friends and teachers, and you've graduated to adulthood.  But you still have '"teen" after your age two years into college! Two years after you earned the right to vote! Two years after your parents could no longer -- at least technically -- tell you what to do.  And then, finally, you turn 20.

Twenty sounds infinitely better than 19. It signals adulthood, for sure. It signals that you are no longer in that horrible not-quite-adult-like-place-but-expected-to-act-like-an-adult phase.    Twenty is, like, the first time you might actually be taken seriously. By at least one person.

In your twenties, you graduate from college. Your career starts and may take off. You may very well get married, have your first child....You go from barely two years out of high school to maybe a homeowner. Living completely independent of anyone else. And did I mention...finally being taken seriously?

So rejoice in 20! Celebrate it as a special birthday. Even if there are no greeting cards specifically for it.

Happy Birthday to my very favorite 20 year old.