Tag Archives: teenagers

Love

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It’s not enough. 

To just love is not enough to raise a happy child.

I am guided by love that allows me to feel her sadness, and to always know where to find that missing shoe. This love also allows me to offer up the last juicy shrimp in my bowl, and to know exactly how much salt to put on her eggs. Every time.

It’s not enough.

My legs and my heart, they’re a little wobbly. It’s getting harder to stand back up when I get knocked down by this growing, beautiful child. Her cold shoulder and harsh words overwhelm me, they make me weak. I should hide so she won’t have a target. Oh my love.

It’s not enough.

I am her ugly monster. The source of her anxiety, her stress, and everything that is wrong with her life. I can’t be spoken to, trusted, or treated like a loved one. But I have so much love.

It’s not enough.

Stay low, move quietly, and avoid direct contact. I need to repair the damage within and protect my fragile, cracking shell. She needs more than love.

It’s not enough.

BIG APPLE

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All I had to do was take Saleha to New York. Not to Africa. And not to Haiti, where I recently saw firsthand what abject poverty looks like. It was in New York, where she learned that she can help poor and hungry people. It is a big leap for a privileged first-world teenager, who was in New York to celebrate her birthday by eating good food, shopping and sightseeing. A teenager–like thousands of others who walk on this planet in a bubble with their heads bowed to their personal electronic devices.

It started that first night with a full belly when she decided to give her leftovers to the first homeless person she saw. Twenty steps later, a very grateful woman took it, her sign declared she had three hungry children. As we walked away, Saleha declared…

…I feel bad.

Well, do you have money?

Yes.

Why don’t you buy her a meal?

Saleha’s offer was graciously turned down repeatedly. Dejected, she walked away.

One day, several conversations, many meals, and a few leftover packs of food later, I asked what we should do on our last day in New York.

I want to spend my money to buy food and give it to the homeless. And I want to find that woman.

My heart ached and soared. An antidote to the weekend of loud screaming lights, wafts of cloying perfume, hours of shopping, and the constant sightings of posters with half naked bodies promising many things. And a soothing healing balm to my own personal wounds inflicted by the teenage verbal and emotional rocks she sometimes throws at me.

After a gluttonous Sunday brunch, armed with bags of sandwiches, off we went to Central Park to find hungry homeless people.

Food

Some were easy, some were not. And we never found that woman.

This is complicated.

It sometimes is, my love.

 

When we got home, she churned ideas with a friend and they are off to pretty solid start on easy ways for people to donate money to Dimes for Dining. With the cash, they are going to make food, and I will drive them to personally feed hungry people on the street. And maybe it won’t be so complicated for right now.

So it was the big city in America that did it. Not a faraway small city with mountains and rivers of trash. It was in New York that she connected with the hungry and homeless who were surrounded by wealth and obscene overindulgence.

For her, and for now, I guess charity does start at home.

ROCKS.

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It’s impossible to prepare for parenthood. Yes you can anticipate the sleepless nights, the constant vigilance on kids as they grow, making sure they are safe, healthy and happy. Easy stuff. But who can honestly anticipate the acute heart break that eventually settles in your soul as these babies turn into little adults, and learn how to navigate the world. It’s the stuff that was written in small print when you bring these wonderful creatures into the world. And you can’t walk away from it.

I give life lessons and love willingly. I also have to be strong enough to receive the mental and verbal rocks that get thrown at me, and have to be resilient enough to either avoid them, or if I’m hit, stand back up and continue giving life lessons and love.

When those rocks come hurtling at me out of nowhere, I have to dig into the recesses of my parenting brain and execute defensive maneuvers. This could include verbal tactics to help illuminate and broaden the small, self-absorbed world of a teen. If the claws come out and further attack ensues, I implement a containment plan: Punishment.  And because their world is so fucking small, their life resumes rather quickly. The rocks get put away, claws retracted. I on the other hand, nurse my wounds for days. My whole body permanently tattooed with more invisible battle scars.

Rinse and repeat.

There’s nothing clinical about this job. It comes with strong emotional and physical bonds. It’s not for the faint of heart. We don’t have armor to be emotionally safe from the havoc of a growing child. The love we feel for these creatures is all consuming. Yesterday I had a fleeting moment of wondering what it would be like to be child-free. Or at the minimum to be free of the anguish, pain and heartache once reserved for the comparatively flighty world of dating.

I need to invest in some serious padding, because I am committed to this job forever. I also need to invest in some self-control because after all, as the husband reminds me, these creatures we love so much are not in control of their emotions. Which makes it all the more important that we stay in control of ours.

And I do so love these creatures.