Down the Rabbit Hole

15, the Age of Unreason

My daughter turned 15 surrounded by a gaggle of her closest friends. For a few hours, our house was transported into real life “Among Us’” game which, from what we could loosely interpret, was part murder mystery, part escape room, part teenagers scaring themselves in our dark basement. It was chaotic and disjointed but it was also kind of wonderful. They abandoned their phones, and went racing through rooms, laughing and fully engaged in good, old fashioned play.
Fifteen is such a tough, transitional age. In just one year they will be learning to drive, applying for summer jobs and some of them will begin visiting colleges. They won’t have too many opportunities to just be kids before the world tells them its time to start adulting for real.

For now though, at age 15, we are nearing the end of our first year of high school. Our daughter has done exceptionally well. She kicked off the year by joining the volleyball team. Her inaugural season was marked by her smile both on and off the court. Her joy was a testament to finding the sport she loved, and the teammates who became fast friends.
In fact, all the friends she has made this year are girls who inspire her, support her, encourage her and challenge her. It has been great to watch her with them, becoming more and more her own best version of herself. She isn’t the quiet, shy wall flower I feared. She is funny, and courageous. She does not hold herself back. She excels in her classes, works hard to put out her best work and seeks help when she struggles.

She still gets frustrated, moody and withdrawn. Sometimes it feels harder to connect with her then the little girl we knew. There are times she would rather do anything else than spend time with us. There are still plenty of eye-rolls and heated spats fueled by attitude. At 15, there are plenty of times when I think she has lost her hearing, her sense of humor and the ability to reason. There are days when I have convinced myself that age 15 is in fact, the Age of the Unreasonable.

She unreasonably needs to find that one specific and random t-shirt amid the many piles of laundry, just as we have leave to be somewhere. She unreasonably misses the bus by mere seconds and then demands that I bring her to school just after it rockets past the house. She unreasonably believes that a bagel and cream cheese constitute a full and balanced meal. She rejects the use of sunglasses and ball caps in full sun and carves the necks out of all her sweatshirts. She still loves filling up my phone with selfies of her silly faces and has made an art form out of capturing the most unflattering pictures of me when I am not looking. My daughter, at 15, knows more about a vast many things than I do. Her playlists are far superior to mine and I can’t respectively leave the house looking good unless I let her do my makeup. All these things are part of who she is at this stage in her life – and she can be aggravating and frustrating, that is true.

But here is what is also true…our daughter is developing a certain maturity, a sense of self, that is really remarkable to watch.

She recently started reading a book that has been influential in helping her process loss, and to discover lessons about living life well in the wake of grief. She likes to read me certain passages that have made an impression. One night last week, she and I ended up talking for hours about the dark time she went through when she lost her Aunt to cancer. She understands now how formative that was for her, and I was impressed with how deeply she’s considered the ways in which that experience has changed her.

Over the break, a friend’s sister was in a terrible accident where she was seriously injured, and her boyfriend was killed. She told me she could not stop thinking about how quickly a person’s life can change, and that it had a profound effect on her. She said shes working on not letting the little things "bother her or knock her mood off track" because a bad hair day, a bad breakout or a fight with a friend, is nothing compared to a day when you could lose your mobility, your love ones, or even your life.

Our daughter speaks in a way that shows me she has a new appreciation for the blessings in her life, and knows that she is lucky to have a safe space to come home to each day. She has developed empathy for those who may not have the same support system, and I can see that it’s made her want to be kinder and more patient with others.

I realize while writing this, that there is so much more to her at age 15 than I gave her credit for. She is in many ways, a typically teenager. She is often an unreasonable, frustrating adolescent. But, she is also evolving more rapidly than I was prepared for. This version of our daughter is remarkably bolder, more confident, more reflective and introspective. She is growing impossibly more beautiful and more fierce. At age 15, our daughter is somehow, suddenly, just more….and I am unreasonably in love with all of it.