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That Thing Where I Have a Teenager Now

September 27, 2017 | Melanie Dale

“My friend uses a credit card to do cat eyes with her eyeliner,” she tells me as she’s getting ready for seventh grade picture day.

Huh, I think. I’ve wondered about the elusive cat eye strategy for like a decade—how do they get it so straight?!?—and now my daughter is just casually explaining it to me like everyone knows this. This teen girl thing may be pretty useful. I wonder what else she knows. Make a mental note to bring up contour kits and why people are using something called a “highlighter” but not the kind for studying lines at theatre camp. She might know more.

My life has become one big “Who Wore It Better?” post. My daughter borrows my clothes, and daggone it, she looks incredible in them. All of a sudden I feel like Middle-Aged Barbie and I’m not even mad.

The first time this happened was when I gave her one of my t-shirts. This shirt had never quite fit me, on account of my lopsided feedbags ravaged by her brother during Our Year of Perpetual Nursing. The t-shirt didn’t stand a chance, between the too-small crewneck and the way the design on the front caused an optical illusion that my boobs stretched precisely to my natural waist. It was an illusion, my boobs are fine, MY BOOBS ARE FINE DAMMIT STOP ASKING.

I nonchalantly passed it to my daughter, she threw it on like a freaking movie star, and when I looked at her I realized that’s what it’s supposed to look like. It wasn’t the t-shirt’s fault that it sucked. It was my son’s for sucking so hard for a whole year. My mom boobs were to blame.

Wait, I was trying to write an essay about how lovely it is having a teenager but ended up talking about my ladybags again. This happens a lot.

Oh, did I mention I have a teenager? I have a teenager. I’m still trying out the words. This phase is brand new, although the snarky attitude and emotional dysregulation have been coming on for years. She is my child, after all, and I’m passing on all my best traits.

Teenagerland comes with new privileges and new responsibilities, and since she’s my oldest, she gets to blaze the trail for everyone else while my husband and I pretend like we’ve mapped it all out and nothing surprises us. Nobody panic, we are totally in control of the situation and in no way making it all up as we go along like a life-sized Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

We live a couple blocks from a little shopping area with a fast food restaurant, grocery store, and nail salon. You know, the suburban triumvirate. A couple weeks ago, she came home from church with a gift card for the restaurant. Every Sunday, she volunteers in the toddler room, playing with two-year-olds so their moms and dads can have an hour off to sit in an air-conditioned sanctuary. The little ones don’t need to know that their parents are finding sanctuary from them. And my little one is now old enough to volunteer, and her service snagged her a gift card of gratitude.

She showed it to me proudly, sliding it into her stylish cross body bag, and I thought for a second and said, “You can go use it if you want.” Her mouth turned up a bit on the sides but she made sure she wasn’t experiencing Teen Delusional Hearing. “I can? Now?” “Sure,” I answered. “Why don’t you go see if your friend can walk over with you?”

And that was it. My teen daughter walked to a restaurant and ate food and I stayed home and hoped she remembered all the lessons about street crossing and stranger avoidance.

She did. She’s great. Nobody panic. She even brought me fries. As I told the kids when they were younger, “Good sharing your toys. Mommy’s so proud.” Except now the toys are waffle fries, and instead of driving a Matchbox car around a racetrack, I’m driving a waffle fry into my mouth.

We don’t just share fries, makeup tips, and clothes, either. We share acne cream, because what’s the most surprising thing about being middle-aged? It’s zits big enough to pilot their own spaceship that’s what. I keep telling my face it’s either fine lines or zits but you can’t have both, but Stupidface doesn’t listen.

Maybe acne is the link between teens and adults. The great leveler. Boobs may rise and boobs may fall, but the pimples keep popping, regardless of age. And I’m talking about my bosoms again.

In conclusion, I like teen. Teen my favorite. Boobs.

(Dear editors of Coffee+Crumbs, I’m sorry for redirecting all browser searches for “teen boobs” to our lovely blog about motherhood, but maybe anybody searching for that needs a bunch of mamas to talk to them anyway.)

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In Storytelling Tags teenagers, big kids are awesome
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Foster care has forced a reality to the forefront of my every day that I would rather pretend doesn’t exist: my children are not my own.
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We said yes to our first tiny boy the moment I heard the words “double fractured skull.” He was mine, wholly and completely, before I even met him.
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We said yes to our first little girl when we heard she was his sister. She didn’t talk; she was terrified of men. She was mine when I had to be brave for her in a way I already wished I had never experienced as a mama.
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We had them for three months. Then they left. I couldn’t stop crying. They were safe and cared for and it was right, but it still hurt.
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We said yes to our second son just a few weeks later. He looked at us with his giant brown eyes and wondered who we were. Six months later, he has favorite things each of our older kids do, he whispers “dadada”, and he snuggles into my shoulder when he’s tired. It'll break us again if he leaves. He has become wholly and completely ours.
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Why do I keep saying yes to potential heartache? Because I learned not long ago that my children are not my own. My hope for their safety, their future, their well-being, isn't determined by how well I parent or how wise I am.
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Hope grows and bears fruit in the most miraculous of ways. Hope grows out of brokenness and allows us to not just step into others' hurt, but to say yes to the most broken and vulnerable because His hope has become our declaration.
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My inheritance is my hope. Nothing can take away what Jesus has for me. So if for now I live with uncertainty and hurt, it's temporary. Nothing can change the perfectly-healed, no more crying, no more pain future He has for me.
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“Isn't it hard to give them back?” Always. But my Healer is stronger than my fear and His hope is stronger than my hurt. // #growyourhope by @pursuedby_ #ccfreewrite #fostercare

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Foster care has forced a reality to the forefront of my every day that I would rather pretend doesn’t exist: my children are not my own.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We said yes to our first tiny boy the moment I heard the words “double fractured skull.” He was mine, wholly and completely, before I even met him.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We said yes to our first little girl when we heard she was his sister. She didn’t talk; she was terrified of men. She was mine when I had to be brave for her in a way I already wished I had never experienced as a mama.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We had them for three months. Then they left. I couldn’t stop crying. They were safe and cared for and it was right, but it still hurt.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We said yes to our second son just a few weeks later. He looked at us with his giant brown eyes and wondered who we were. Six months later, he has favorite things each of our older kids do, he whispers “dadada”, and he snuggles into my shoulder when he’s tired. It'll break us again if he leaves. He has become wholly and completely ours.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Why do I keep saying yes to potential heartache? Because I learned not long ago that my children are not my own. My hope for their safety, their future, their well-being, isn't determined by how well I parent or how wise I am.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Hope grows and bears fruit in the most miraculous of ways. Hope grows out of brokenness and allows us to not just step into others' hurt, but to say yes to the most broken and vulnerable because His hope has become our declaration.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My inheritance is my hope. Nothing can take away what Jesus has for me. So if for now I live with uncertainty and hurt, it's temporary. Nothing can change the perfectly-healed, no more crying, no more pain future He has for me.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“Isn't it hard to give them back?” Always. But my Healer is stronger than my fear and His hope is stronger than my hurt. // #growyourhope by @pursuedby_ #ccfreewrite #fostercare
I’m raising four children, two of whom live bravely with special medical and developmental needs. Mothers like me often hear, “You’re superwoman,” but we’re no heroes. I’m certainly not. I am a full-human who often aches for some numbing cream of her own.
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But I’d trade all the numbing cream in the world for the ability to take on my children’s pain. I pray that I could substitute my suffering for theirs, but I’m their mother. Not their savior.
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I’m an aching mom doing her best to make things hurt a little less.
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Be still. I sense an invitation to stop running. My lungs are tired and I struggle to breathe.
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// "Numbing Cream" guest post by @kayla_craig, new on C+C today. Link in profile.
“Exhaustion has become the social norm among busy women. And let’s admit the hard truth, we often find ourselves glorifying those busy schedules, giving ourselves a pat on the back when we squeeze one more commitment into an already too-packed day, and admiring others who seem to handle the juggling act as if they were a professional in a three-ring circus.”
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I know.
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From the pieces I have gathered along the way, I know my parents were passionate people as teenagers. For years they were on again, off again. They loved and fought with equal intensity, and their parents' indignity toward the whole situation didn't help matters. By the time I was three or four, I think my father realized he simply wasn’t ready for parenthood, nor did he yet have the means to take care of me the way he (and my fiercely-protective grandfather) thought I deserved. When my mom married a man who adopted me on paper and into his life and who I’ve ever since called “Dad,” my father bowed out. And that was alright, really. Maybe it was even for the best. Partly because I was so young, and partly because I still had a wonderful dad to raise me, I never questioned it, though I wondered about it from time to time. // From "Blackberries" by @bek_warren, new on C+C today. Link in profile.
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She scrubbed and scrubbed, but the mud wouldn't come out. She accidentally dropped the shampoo bottle in her shower, so she used toilet paper to try to wipe it up. The shower floor was still sticky, but she remembered that baby powder helps when her baby brother gets a rash from being too wet, so she thought maybe it would dry up the shampoo, too.
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She said, "I'm so sorry, Mommy," and asked me if I could tell her how to clean it, so she could do it herself. So I wouldn't have to clean another mess someone else made.
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