Mothering on the edge

The teenage dream

[Note - this is not just a piece for mothers, this is for everyone who remembers how it feels to be a vulnerable young woman, and how we can instil a fierce circle of love around other young women, however they may show up in our worlds].

As I find myself in the throes of teenage parenting, I reflect on how I haven’t felt this immersed in the utter rawness of mothering since they were toddlers. And, that whilst this is without doubt my favourite parenting stage so far, as I interact with my incredible daughters in their wondrous young adulthood, I have never felt so vulnerable and stretched in this role.

Bambi on Ice

Back in the toddler years, the years that were so challenging that we traded ‘third child’ for ‘vasectomy’ (brutal honesty moment), it was a constant pull of relentless demand, conflicting schedules, extraordinary physicality, and emotional survival. I know that I’ve purposely forgotten those years, perhaps glazed over them. Being wrenched in every direction - two shift working parents, myself freshly bereaved and barely clinging onto sanity; yet also filled with wonder and amazement, as these creatures of our creation explored their boundaries and flexed their developing capabilities; encountering danger, glitter dust and everything in between. Learning to walk, to talk, to find their space in the world…transforming from the frailty of Bambi on ice to the clumsy confidence of Labrador puppies. It was intense to say the least.

What followed was a strangely calm period between the ages of, I guess, Taz reaching seven and Fiver becoming twelve or thirteen, (acknowledging that this also bled into two subsequent years of ‘staying at home’ in a viral blur). This was a point where I sat back and thought: ‘wow. We have created two sentient humans. Two creatures who can walk, talk, feed, study, converse, go to the toilet by themselves, speak politely to other adults, don’t throw themselves into danger, and toe the line of every boundary we set. Didn’t we do well.’

And then came the teens.

In an unexpected twist of my own fate, I find myself as a ‘stay-at-home’ working mum in the teen years, having worked mostly out of the home full-time throughout their formative years, and that could not have been more unintentionally prescient. For having seen my Bambi(no)’s find their feet and learn to skate back then, suddenly they are once more on the precipice. Now they have their own designer skates, but they skid to the edges faster than I can keep up, as the ice underneath them gets ever thinner. As toddlers, they would sometimes fall on the ice, grazing a knee or bumping a chin, feeling a bit red face and embarrassed, howling to demonstrate their indignance;  however as teenagers, when they fall…they fall right through, and they fall under. The consequences can be so much more significant, and it is so much harder to catch them. It’s dark under the ice.

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

The magic feather

I recall a moment when Taz and Fiver were 3 and 5 years old, and I was walking them back from pre-school and school. There was an awful road crossing – one that we couldn’t avoid, and that had no official crossing or traffic lights despite repeated campaigns to the council and a local woman having been killed there… I hated it. That day, I had allowed the girls to take their scooters to school after much begging and pleading that wore me down - a decision to add to the list of those in my life that I wish I hadn’t made. At the crossing I ended up with said scooters gripped under my arms, their soft paws grasped tightly in mine, one helmet hanging from my wrist and the other helmet clutched in her own spare hand by 3-year-old Taz as she had gathered a beautiful feather on the way home, and was cradling it in her pink helmet like a prize in a treasured bowl. As we reached half way across the road, caught in a terrifying stasis on the tiny ‘island’ with traffic thundering past either side, the wind from a passing lorry lifted the feather out of her magic bowl. As I watched the feather waft into the oncoming traffic, I simultaneously felt Taz prise herself from my grip to reach after it, her damp paw slipping from mine.

At that moment of intense vulnerability, with too many things to hold and not enough hands, not sure what to do with my muscles in case I released the wrong grip and inadvertently let Fiver go too, I defaulted to voice and shouted ‘NOOOO’ in such a tone that we became glued together by its urgent power. A highly charged ‘ready brek’ glow binding us in safety as Taz clung to me, whilst the feather gently floated into the air and was slammed to smithereens by a car.

As we reached safety on the other side I sobbed, and vowed that they would never take their scooters to school again.

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

As teenagers, where I can no longer use my grip, nor my voice in the moments where it is needed, as I may not be with them, I have tried to instil in them instead this mantra of fierce love:

‘Whatever happens, I can’t promise I won’t get mad at you, but I will always come and get you, I will always rescue you, I will always make you safe, and I will always love you.’

This is their magic feather. This is what binds us now.

I don’t want my daughters experiencing what I did as a teenager or young adult: scared and vulnerable at some stranger’s flat having made a bad decision after a few too many shandies and not knowing who to call for help, walking down lonely tow paths in the dark so as to not get caught smoking (substitute vaping), throwing up in a park having met friends with alcohol whilst our parents thought we were at the cinema…you know the drill. It’s not that they won’t encounter these situations, I just need them to know that I will always get them out of it. My primal force now, as it was when they were toddlers, is to keep them safe. Yes I might ground them, revoke privileges or apply other sanctions, but they will be safe.

This played out for me about 18 months ago, the first time Fiver and her friends met up in a park for summer drinks. It was not long after Covid, her year group had lost two years of teenage development, and we were joyous at seeing them gather together, to do what we had done at that age, and to just be teenagers. At just 9pm I had a call from Fiver’s best friend saying ‘Emma, you need to come and get her, she’s not well’. I could tell her friend was tipsy, so I just ascertained that it was alcohol ‘not well’, as opposed to anything else, and jumped in the car with Himself to get her. When we arrived, bless her, she had vomitously expelled the contents of her previously consumed ‘pasta pot’ all over the shoes of a boy she had a crush on, and it was his birthday. I’m sure he was thrilled at this unexpected gift. So as we literally scooped her off the ground, her adidas-clad toes scraping in the mud and her woman-child body wanting to curl up and sleep, we said ‘Happy Birthday’ to the object of her affections, a huge thank you to her bestie, and took her home for a shower, cuddles and a cup of tea. There was little admonishment - she felt wretched enough the next morning, and God knows, we’d both been there. The fact that she’d ‘let’ her best friend call me, was somehow a parenting highlight, and a validation of the deep and unspoken trust that had been forged.

Expansion

The love and fear I feel as they grow up is like that which people describe when they have additional children - it doesn’t replace love that I have already or diminish previous feelings, it just expands.

At this stage of my parenting life, I’m not being woken up because of bed-wetting or fear of the dark, being pulled from slumber to be met with eager eyes and questions such as: ‘what is Jesus’ middle name?’ or ‘why do I have arms?’; now I am woken to help with emergency trigonometry at midnight before an exam, to check a critical item has been laundered, to soothe a broken heart or to assuage fear of death. The existential and the practical crashing into each other, jarring like tectonic plates of the teenage earthquake. Staying up until the small hours to do a late night pick ups. Instead of washing clothes free of wee and baked beans, it’s now literal blood, sweat and tears. Mine and theirs.

Photo by Ed Leszczynskl on Unsplash

My role has evolved from physical protector to guardian of their emotional wellbeing. Helping them to navigate first love and the explosion of chain reactions that follow; to balance the delicate seesaw of sexual maturity and immaturity; to hold them in their grief when love fades and friendships turn; to acknowledge their helplessness at not being able to avoid pain. Choosing my words and reactions so carefully so as not to judge, be overbearing, or worst of all, to close them down. Because if they fall under, and they refuse my hand, I may never get them back.

My 4pm emotional download clinic is open every weekday, and operates 24-hour at the weekends, and boy, does it get busy. I must set up some impossible to infiltrate and overly complex booking appointment system à la NHS. And then there’s the highly ironic tech support role I suddenly find myself in because they don’t understand ‘email’ in their world of instant messaging, TikTok and snaps; whilst every important institution they need to learn to interact with - colleges, hospitals, gyms, clubs - contact them via this method alone. Critical messages buried under the plethora of SHEIN returns and offers from Domino’s pizza. I tutor them through their bamboozlement as to how to ‘open’ an email, and how to send one. ‘Just type in an address and click on the little paper aeroplane…’ Utter bewilderment.

Photo by 84 Video on Unsplash

It’s not like we have anything else going on…

What I find most interesting about teenagehood though, is where it falls within our life cycle. Most parents of teenagers I know are at a full-on career stage, possibly caring for elderly parents or others, smack bang in the middle of the menopause (or manopause?) and having our own existential crises as we enter the second half of our lives, just as our teens embark on the prime of theirs. The support systems that were in place when they were babies and toddlers are no longer there. There are no morning groups, song times, get togethers…although the thought of bringing my teenagers to some kind of meet up in a church hall where they can run around whilst we drink tea is making me ‘lol’. There are no group chats where we work out how to navigate issues as a collective, as once they go to college we don’t even know their friends, let alone their friends’ parents.

Yet despite all of this, it is, on the whole, utterly wonderful. Amidst the fear and the worry, I have two new friends. Whilst very conscious to maintain the ‘mother daughter’ dynamic, we can also be friends at the same time (some of the time). It is a joy to spend time with two incredible young women who pour out their beautiful hearts on my lap, who laugh with me, who share common interests. Ones who choose films that are no longer completely shit, who are seriously witty, who take my breath away with their life insights and observations, who are properly good at playing cards (I now genuinely have to try hard to win), and who inspire me with their bravery and independence as they forge their own unique paths. Companions that I go for weekends away with, that sometimes cook me dinner (!!), that I learn from every single day, and am more proud of than I can articulate. Regurgitated pasta pots and all.

In this piece I wrote a letter to my eldest - this is how I feel about having a daughter right on the cusp of adulthood, who turns 18 in just a few months.

Dear Daughter…

In the meantime, sending much love to you wherever you may be on this crazy little journey called life, and wherever young women show up in your world.

[all references to and pics of my girls added with their approval!!]

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xxx