Down the Rabbit Hole

Age 12

Age 12

It has taken me a bit longer to write my annual piece reflecting on my daughter’s latest age milestone. I discovered that my commitment to leaving this legacy of her development in electronic ink, may not be as easy some years. I am surprised to find that some of her milestones are difficult to write about, harder to document for a myriad of reasons…one of which being that not all her changes are of the “warm and fuzzy” variety. I have come to understand that I am very much on this journey with her and that more often than not, her changes can affect my sense of self in very fundamental ways.

Age 12, for example, has introduced several elements in her personal development that I find to be very trying. It seems that the onset of female maturity has served to sharpen both her tongue and her attitude. Suddenly nothing has become too trivial to argue with me about. She seems to delight in it. What’s more is that it sadly seems to be the only activity in which she will readily engage me. At the same time there appears to be no end in the many, many ways in which I embarrass her. I find myself advocating for my own knowledge and experience as a counter to her newly minted sense of “self”. I frequently, and often too loudly, remind her that she does not “know everything” and that she is very much “still a child”. These are not helpful measures from my parenting playbook. I know they enflame the situation more, and still, I can not help myself. For the first time, maybe since those wolverine-like tantrum years of age 3, I can make a detailed list of things I do not much like about this stage of my daughter’s life.

#1. I call it, the “bite”. It is the knife-sharp edge to her attitude, the willingness to go just a bit deeper than necessary with her sarcasm and harshness. The subtle eye rolls have been largely replaced by stomping and slamming doors and defensive retorts that border on screaming. Fun times.

#2. The “Ewww” Factor. This is her habitual dismissal and rejection of me. The same child that clung to me and once lovingly installed me in her phone as “mother bird”, is now the same 12-year-old who instantly and venomously rejects everything I endorse. She seems to do this on principal alone. If I pick up a dress and comment that, is it “cute”, she scrunches up her face or look at me as if my fashion sense must have been surgically removed at birth. The only positive here is that is it easy to manipulate her with reverse psychology. If she thinks I’m only lukewarm on something, she takes that as proof positive that it must be cool enough for her.

#3. Her newly minted vanity or, as I like to put it in terms of the parenting challenge, “the act of teasing out vanity from actual confidence in order to help her build self-awareness, not just self-image.” Sorry, that was a mouthful, but this one is big, big fun. I get to navigate the fragile ego of a preteen, a daunting path fraught with drama and danger. Her foray into makeup has been restricted to mascara and on special occasions, some tinted lip balm. However, she has become a little heavy-handed with both. I try to explain that makeup should be used to enhance what is already there, and not become a distraction to her already beautiful features. I have insisted that she dial it back, pointing out that her too heavy lashes mask, rather than bring out, the stunning color of her eyes. Because she is poised to automatically reject my opinion, she is reluctant to take my advice. She does comply though…most days.

I understand that she has lived two years behind a mask and that she is dealing with pesky breakouts she’s struggling to control. I worry that she sees herself but, sometimes, can’t see beyond the acne and other blemishes.
I have allowed her these small touches of vanity for, and, because of those things. And I struggle daily with how to convey how beautiful she is without making her “outside” any more weighted than what is inside her. I tell her that she doesn’t need “extras”, she is all the extra she will ever need and more. I try reminding her that it also important to foster her inner beauty because it is what will ultimately define who she is as a human being.

The same battle applies to her clothing. She favors tight shirts and tank tops, with oversized sweatshirts and flannels paired with baggy jeans or leggings. She like athletic clothing overall. It is a delicate dance to explain why, even though there is nothing wrong with her body, she does not need to dress in a way that amplifies it. She has a beautiful figure that does not necessary match her age. It is not her fault that genetics have bestowed her with legs for miles and a sweet silhouette. This keeps me in a chronic state of second guessing myself. How much do I let her express her style and how much do I rein it all in because she doesn’t look like the child she still is? I want her to celebrate her youthful body, be proud of its strength and poise…. but only in relative privacy of our home, and only in the clothes I tell her are appropriate. How much of that is protection and how much is repression out of my fear that the world is full of sickos? Some days, I just do not know.

Oh…and the fake nail thing? I pray to God that is just a phase that she and her friends will burn through faster than Playdoh and Barbies because I fricking loathe it.

The other night I was lamenting to a fellow mom, “12 is not very fun,” I tell her, and then feel my eyes start to flood.

I realize I that age 12, has made me sad more than any other before. I find myself longing for things she has left unceremoniously in her wake: piano lessons, hand-made cards, dresses with ruffles and headbands, a love for MY playlists, begging me to play horses and go on bike, demands for me to “snuggle her”, and the rapt way she would listen to all my stories. I find myself missing the messes she’d make with her paints and her beads and even, (dare I admit this?), her slime concoctions. Now she prefers to be in her room, nesting or listening to music, talking to her friends, and organizing her clothes or doing her nails. She emerges for snacks or to begrudgingly help me with chores. She rarely seeks me out to actually do something with her.

I feel grief sometimes, actual fucking grief, over the loss of her childhood. The day she got her first period, I felt like I was sending her off to kindergarten all over again. There was that same, unforgiving pain of something lost forever. There was this ache in my chest, and I could not stop crying. She took the moment in stride, confused by how much I was losing my shit over something I’d been preparing her for the last year. I had prepared her, but I had not prepared myself, apparently.

These days I feel like I live for the moments when she leaves me a sweet note on my white board or texts me from school with news about making high honors or with good news. There are moments when we will be at the barn doing chores and she will suddenly confide in me, or even better, ask my advice about something. The infrequency of those moments can make me terribly sad. It makes me dread the years to come, how she may grow even less interested in us, as teenagers reportedly do. Sometimes she’ll let her guard down and I’ll catch her laughing at something funny I have done. It’s like a breath of fresh air. It feels like a tiny victory in an ageless war.

I try to take comfort in the things about my daughter that so far, have remained consistent. There are many awesome things about her at age 12, despite the overall tone of this blog…

She makes wonderful friends. Despite her shyness with adults, she seems to have no issue relating to her peers. She has a lovely little “girl crew” that are as diverse and colorful as wildflowers. They each bring out something different in her and it is a joy to watch her grow and foster those relationships. A recent birthday brought in a rush of cards in which the hand scrawled sentiments testified that my daughter is a kind, generous, warm, and funny friend. We must be doing some things right, I guess.

She cares deeply about her family. While she is reserved and keeps her emotions fairly close to her chest, she regularly asks after cousins and family members we don’t often see. She remembers our birthdays, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and will wake up and acknowledge those special days without being prompted or reminded. She treasures my grandmother especially. My gramma boop is one of the few people she hugs with both arms and lets her hold on as long as she wants to. She has become a special placeholder in my daughter’s heart. One of my husband’s sisters is battling cancer. It has been a battle our daughter has witnessed firsthand. Recently and unsolicited, our daughter made her aunt a collage. It contained pictures of them together through the years and it was peppered with messages of love and encouragement. It was intimate and moving and it that left all of us in awe and tears.

Our daughter is academically mindful and responsible. She checks her grades almost obsessively and places a great deal of pride in her standing. She made high honors in back-to-back terms this first year in middle school. She is particularly interested in writing, something she has shown an early aptitude for. Her writing style is surprisingly candid and descriptive. I wonder if perhaps she finds it easier to be more forthcoming and expressive in her written words than verbally. It has been a sweet discovery to think she might be a budding author, that she may share this passion in common with me. I try not to comment on that though, lest she reject this too out of habit.

Our daughter will still bestow affection. It is the rare expression of her affection that still brings me the most joy. It is like a balm to the sore and grieving places in my soul. Despite everything, she will still crawl into bed between us to watch a show. I will still find her snuggled against her father; one delicate arm thrown over his chest. In these moments she always lets down her guard. Sometimes I will slip my hand into hers and she will responsively curl her fingers around mine. Before she gets too sleepy though, she will disengage herself. She always comes back to kiss each of us goodnight, although sometimes that kiss is more air than substance. I’ll take it though. I’ll take all of her, even at age 12, and hold on as tightly as I possibly can.

At a recent family dinner, she begged me not to let them make her sit at the kid’s table and I felt a pang in my chest at my own memory of being excluded. In that moment, I found the opportunity to be her advocate and ally. I pulled a chair out for her between her dad and me. I gave her a place at the adult table, with us. For the rest of the evening, she clung close to me, rewarding my alliance by sharing texts, taking photos with funny filters, settling in close next to me and repeatedly resting her head on my shoulder.

This blog has been an emotional one to write. It has taken me several tries to get it “right”, and I am still not sure I did. But I wanted to leave something here to mark this milestone that was authentic and honest about this time in both our lives. I wanted her to know that despite our arguments and conflicts, I did often try to remember the turbulence of age 12. I did try to remember that moods and phases are part of this tumultuous age when we are not quite yet young women, but no longer children inside. I want her to remember that once, at age 12, I gave her a seat at the adult table, right between her father and I, because I saw her - everything she had left behind, and everything she was yet to become. I saw her, and I wanted her to know that at age 12, and for always and forever, her place was between us.