and some days (TODAY), she makes me pop the cork on a cheap bottle of Zin that’s caught more dust than the corners of my bedroom and drink it straight from my beautiful, thin, read (sic) bowl-shaped wine glass like a toddler sucking apple juice from a sippy cup.  She is all that bold, beautiful, fiery Sense of Self that takes down parental figures like a scythe does wheat.  Fifteen doesn’t care who stands in her way.  Fifteen will karate chop your trachea and never look back at the wheezing, almost-carcass she’s left behind.  Fifteen forgets she’ll need you tomorrow.  Fifteen is brimstone and smoke and cuss words muttered perceptibly behind eyes that would cut out your heart with laser beams if she could.  Fifteen would leave you for dead.  Fifteen dares you to even EXIST in her world of vigilante justice.

Boyfriend tells me about his neighbor, weary of her teenage stepsons and their antics (driving without a license, whatever manner of public mayhem they can create, etc.).  Her daughters (with the teen boys’ dad) are around four and six years old.  I respond with vitriol- my feelings are transparent:  once you have more than one child with someone, you should not be allowed to procreate with someone else.  If you have more than one child, those kids deserve every ounce of your energy, time, financial ability; you must be responsible for what you helped create.  Children are all-encompassing.  They demand more than you can imagine, and more yet each step of the way.  This neighbor’s adorable four and six- who bring their Mommy angry sighs and frowns as they refuse naps, brussels sprouts, and polite thank-yous for gifts from birthday party guests- will someday give her far more muck heaped up than her “bad” stepsons!  Wait for the pain of daughters, young mother, wait and weep.

The Zin is mostly gone, the fingers weary of fast typing between this and an article to be submitted for publication (can I get paid for this, please?)!  A boy of thirteen-going-on-fourteen lies on the sofa behind me and watches the beginning of National Treasure, winding down after a day of eighth grade and track practice and girls and notes and brainpower and legpower and emotion.  I tell him he has to go to bed at 9pm.  “OK, mom,” he smiles, “Thanks for letting me watch the movie a bit.”  I choke.  I lean over, kiss this man-boy long and hard on the head (too much emotion, damn Zin), and tell him quietly, “I love you, baby.”  I go up and kiss everyone with Zinbreath.  Even Ms. Fifteen-Going-On-Sixteen.  I talk to her about our boy-cat.  What he likes, how he likes to be petted at night and then left alone.  She has softened now.  She lets me in.  Her world floors me, what it’s like when I’m not there, what it will be in a year or two when she is gone.  I listen.  I laugh.  I talk.  I pretend an hour ago didn’t happen.  I leave, five years older and with the wet tears streaming down my cheeks.  I kiss Twelve, and Eight.  I tell Ten to go to bed, now, even with his book (yes, I noticed, baby).

Had anyone warned me, would I have even listened?  Hardest job in the world.  I salute you, mothers.  I salute you, fathers.  Especially the single ones.  My Twelve told Boyfriend the other day that she didn’t think I was the marrying type.  Perhaps.  But I’m trying baby.  And you guys?  You’re Priority One.  Way ahead of me… I love you more than life.  xoxo