first date

Teenage Daughter went on her first date! It feels just like yesterday that I dressed now Teenage Daughter in her purple little snowsuit and strapped her into the car seat. And now she went on a date!
On Friday she asked if we could drop her off at the movies on Sunday afternoon. She wanted to see “The Golden Compass” with Tall Guy. I have never met Tall Guy, but his name has been mentioned occasionally when Teenage Daughter talks about school. I asked what Tall Guy’s parents did, and was relieved when I heard the dad is a prof. What does that say about me? That I am an educational snob? That I trust profs entirely? I want to scream NO NO NO, but she is my daughter and I just need to know!!! But I know, she is fourteen after all, and there were also other kids. I did not drop her off out of fear to get out of the car and give in to my curiosity. Most Special Spouse took her to the movies, and picked her up. Did I manage to make a fool of myself? Of course! Before Teenage Daughter left, I told her not to do anything she did not want to do, and she just replied: “Mama, I am not stupid!” I apologized right away. After Teenage Daughter and Most Special Spouse returned, I asked TD how the movie was (“great”) and MSS if he had seen Tall Guy, but the only info I got was that Tall Guy is tall.
I have to say that Teenage Daughter is blessed with good looks. She is also tall, and I do not know how often people have told me - in her presence - how beautiful she is (“she should be a model”), and I am left standing, not sure what to say to a perfect stranger in the Target sock section – yes, we worked very hard? So she is tall and beautiful, and it was a matter of time when this first date would come around. Maybe if this whole thing would not have such a serious word / concept. In countries over there the concept of ‘date’ is alien, even though the English word is now used more and more. You go out in a group, then maybe alone with someone, but everything is more relaxed, not so much pressure as with a date. I am trusting Teenage Daughter. She is an only child and extremely independent and mature, but still, her brain is only fourteen. And if you wish to read more the about brain of a teenager and get scared, just read Inside the Teenage Brain, a Frontline interview about a study on the teenage brain.

And then I am never sure with my “mothering skills.” Since my mother died when I was five I do not have a natural model. Several years ago appeared Hope Edelman’s Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss which I came across last year. I only recently learned to go to this dark place in my soul. The book is fine, but I did not experience this revelation other women expressed about the book. Edelman lost her mother when she was seventeen, and that is tough. The loss of the mother is tough no matter how old you are. But the experiences of most women in the book did not speak so much to me, since they knew and remember their mother. I could relate much better to The Loss That Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father by Maxine Harris since it addresses the void that cannot be filled even with memories. Hope Edelman has now a new book Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become. I probably should read it, but I think I already know what I will find, that motherless mothers protect their family, always with the possible loss in mind you wish to spare your own child. It is so exhausting to go this dark place in the soul, but maybe I need to read the book just for reassurance, that is fine to feel insecure, that there are no perfect mothers, and that you would not even like to be a perfect mother! Imagine the legacy for the child – mother did always and everything best, you are doomed to fail!

And speaking of dark places in the soul: In one of my courses we also had read The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. It turns out that one of my students had likewise experienced unrequited love like Werther. He told me today after the final that he had attempted suicide when he was fourteen years old and showed me the scars on his wrist. Fourteen – what a vulnerable age. I am glad he did not succeed.

Time to think of eight things that make me happy...

mementos

Eucalyptus leaves against the blue sky. I planted a small shoot about two years ago, it survived the first winter and has been growing and growing. has finally rained. The sky is grey, and if we are lucky we will get some more sprinkles.

Thanksgiving has come and gone. This day had no meaning for me, and only after having spent a number of years on this side of the ocean, I slowly develop an understanding of its importance as a family holiday. I am still surprised when people ask me how “we” celebrate Thanksgiving in country over there. When I reply that Thanksgiving is not celebrated, they either realize the error or look at me with surprise. Then I explain that there were no pilgrims in country over there. Thanksgiving is so engrained as a family holiday that the well-known history is simply forgotten or erased from memory. It is a family holiday, and that is it.
I know how important it is for Teenage Daughter not to feel entirely family deprived, and so we make usually once a year an effort to see the few existing relatives here, even though it means hours spent on the road, but I do not mind that at all. On the contrary, I love road trips. So we rent a car, no need to put those miles on ours, and off we go. By now Teenage Daughter has gotten used to not having any relatives in the vicinity. Both her grandmothers are gone, and at least one she got to know and remembers a little. Her only grandfather lives in country over there, and she gets to see him about every second year. It used to be odd on grandparents or family or whatever required-to-bring-a-relative-to-school-day when almost all kids presented at least one grandparent, and more commonly even two or more. Teenage Daughter’s closest relatives on this continent are her father’s uncle and his wife, and they live some twelve hours away, and that is even relatively close.
Do we need family? At some point I read that James A. Michener had no idea, who his parents were and where his family had come from. The idea of having no known heritage fascinates me. It means that you invent your own life, you are bound by nothing, and inventing and re-inventing, so it seems, is what Michener did throughout his life and in his novels. Freedom. No family needed here. Maybe I wish to see such a non-inheritance as a form of freedom, since I knew at leas to some extent who my parents were, at least my father, but this only partly knowing about who my mother was, what kind of a person, leaves me also restless. So better a blank slate? No family like Michener? Create your own? But not being able to know for sure still is no guarantee for not yearning to know and belong. I suspect that Michener researched his novels, all of epic proportions, in so much detail to create such a world of belonging for him time and again.
So we attempt to fashion a sense of belonging for Teenage Daughter. Will this prevent her to yearn for more knowledge about her family background? I have no answer to that. My guess is that I try to prevent such yearning by recalling stories, telling of the past and create little mementos. Not much. Just little things … giver her every Christmas a new ornament with the year written somewhere … I imagine her holding these ornaments up years later and saying, oh yes, I remember this one, we were in XY when I got this one. And she will have a story with it. I also have been writing birthday letters to her for the last two years. Let her keep them in a box, hardly look at them now, but at some point later in life those letters could fulfill a yearning if need should be. How I would love to have such a box. She will probably never need it, since she will have such a box. Those without family need it the most, and those with a family yearn it the least.