Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Blush, Mascara, and Tears

The morning before I took the preliminary oral exams that mark the transition from doctoral student ("Sure, you can pay tuition and say you're working on a doctorate") to doctoral candidate ("Okay, we believe you when you say that you can actually do this. Go ahead and start your dissertation now"), Twelve tried to sneak out of the house wearing makeup.

We don't have very many rules around here: Tasks are to be done, but enforcement is often lax, and Twelve is allowed - even encouraged - to go and do what she wants and needs to do with a minimum of adult interference. No makeup outside the house, though, is one of the big (only) ones.

For a smart kid, she's not very good at being sneaky. She often gives me the cursory side-hug and air kiss on her way out the door in the mornings, so I didn't suspect a thing when I innocently insisted on a real hug.

It was the scent of powder that gave her away.

I am not the most observant of persons; you have to gain/lose about fifty pounds or cut a foot off your hair if you want me to notice that something's different. R only shaves about once a week, and sometimes it takes me all day to notice that he has.

After I realized that Twelve was fully made up, I gathered my wits - I'm barely awake at this point, mind you - and told her to wash her face. Amidst frantic insistence (complete with impatient hand flapping gestures) that she had to leave right this instant, she moistened the corner of a washcloth and took a few cursory swipes. Gathering my wits further, I got the washcloth all the way wet and took some actually-effective swipes, at which point the tears began to fall. Gathering all remaining wits and steeling myself against the crying, I shooed her out the door to school.

Eleven minutes later, when she called to tell me she had arrived (according to our standard operating procedure), she may have seemed a bit resentful but had recovered her composure. Okay, we survived round one and made it to school on time. Excellent.

After school, I decided that I should probably take further action, so I told Twelve she was grounded from her iPod and everything else for the rest of the month. This was greeted with flippancy, bravado, and a whole lot of not-caring, with a good measure of what used to be called back-talk as garnish:

"It doesn't hurt anything!"

"Nobody cares!"

"What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"

She has some good points there, but I stuck to my guns:

"It hurts our relationship when you break my trust in you."

"In our culture, wearing makeup sends a message, and that is significant."

"When you are out in the world, you are representing me, so I have a vested interest in what you look like."

"It's not really about the makeup; it's about you breaking a rule and sneaking around."

She wasn't convinced. As far as I could tell, she didn't really care. She is particularly tired of all sentences that begin with "In our culture ... "

Okay, you've got to get through to her
, I told myself firmly, in a very supportive and encouraging manner. Summoning courage, I bravely pointed at her hooded sweatshirt, her favorite blue one that she wears every day despite the fact that she owns six others: Give me that sweatshirt. Not quite sure what was happening, she took it off and handed it over. Scanning her room, I picked up her favorite sneakers and went to get a box. As she started to realize what was happening, I piled makeup and hair products and nail polishes into the box on top of sweatshirt and sneakers.

Finally, tears.

The brave front crumbled, and she was able to admit that she was wrong. She apologized for sneaking around, and asked why she isn't allowed to wear makeup. This part included the explanation that she had done it because she felt insecure about a zit on the tip of her nose that her friends had mentioned:

Me: Were they making fun of you?
Twelve: No.
Me: Were they trying to be mean to you?
Twelve: No.
Me: So ... they just mentioned the zit?
Twelve: Yeah.

Kind of precious, that bit. I may have ruined it a bit by chuckling behind my hand, but I think I recovered okay. I reminded her that the important thing is for me to be able to trust her, and reminded her that we both want her to be able to continue being trusted. I told her that she is more than welcome to request a re-visiting of the whole makeup question after she's ungrounded. I held her for awhile as she cried and eventually left her alone to sort herself out. Later, I took her a glass of water, and eventually she cried herself to sleep.

Relating the whole incident to R (who had fled the scene somewhere between the seventh "Nobody cares" and the sixteenth "What's the big deal about makeup anyway?"), I think he's proud of the way I handled this first major incident with Twelve. He fears that I let her get away with too much, most of the time, and he's probably right. It just takes so much energy to stay on top of every little thing! I have created a monster with Twelve's independence, that's for sure; for the most part it's the very best possible approach for both of us, but it also occasionally puts us in positions where she feels like she should have more decision-making authority than she does have or is ready to have.

Twelve will be ungrounded in a few days, and I'm sure won't forget to remind me to return all her stuff; I'm sure not looking forward to the whole house smelling like nail polish all the time.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Whoa. Weird Moment. How Do I Sign Emails to Twelve?

That was weird: I just registered Twelve for a volleyball skills building academy (which is not at all as pretentious as it sounds) and, when the email duly arrived with the confirmation, I duly clicked 'forward' to send it to Twelve (along with the news that she's going to a volleyball skills building academy).

Instead of typing in the standard lonely 'fyi' before clicking send, I typed "You're registered for Volleyball Academy! :-)"

Then, because I am so, so much less busy this week than the couple of weeks prior and because yesterday I put a card with a few purple tea bags in the mail to my cousin who loves the color purple and is home with a new baby and because Twelve has been driving me nuts lately so I don't feel terribly connected with her right now and because I am feeling a bit guilty about that, I added (only a little bit self-consciously) "I'm proud of your improvement in volleyball lately, and I hope you keep it up!"

Without thinking about it, I typed my initials, the way I always sign off on casual emails.

PAUSE.

Hey! I'm emailing my kid! That's not how you sign emails to your kid!

[backspace, backspace]

"xoxoxo
mommy"

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Where Has the Magic Gone? (If You Drool On Me Again, It's OVER.)

I'm supposed to be studying, but I've just dumped Twelve off my lap after a prolonged session cuddling in the Big Blue Chair. Twelve calls it cuddling, but really it's like trying to ... metaphors fail me. It's like trying to hold a five-foot, nine-inch, 120-pound* person on your lap. Who squirms. Who accidentally-on-purpose sticks her hand in your armpit. Who simply must rotate 180 degrees every so often without standing up and thinks this is hilarious. Who sneezes without making the least effort to cover.

Last week, one of the other volleyball team moms mentioned that she takes advantage of opportunities to braid her daughter's hair because the girl has started to avoid physical contact with her mom. In a rare moment of maturity, I didn't mention that Twelve still likes occasional hugs and chair sitting, and almost always demands her bedtime back rubs. Score ten mature points for me.

I'm definitely going through some sort of phase, though: I'm not feeling the magic like I used to. I'm just feeling the weight of a somewhat stinky person whose elbow always seems to end up in my boob. I'm tired at night and the back-rubbing demands are getting old. Also, I really should be studying - of course my doctoral preliminary exams would end up being scheduled for the same week as a symposium, a board meeting, and a series of hiring committee interviews.

It's not that I am in a hurry for Twelve to grow out of this; I definitely get that it's still a super important and awesome stage. I don't even particularly dislike the squirming; my boobs are pretty squishy and her elbows aren't quite as lethally pointy as mine. I could do without the occasional bad attitude moments, but those are fairly infrequent and I'm not even seeing that much of Twelve these last few days (see above).

Either there's something wrong with me, or this is perfectly normal.

There are lots of things wrong with me: I seem to be unable to get up early for that precious hour of prime dissertation-writing time before breakfast. I routinely eat cheeseburgers after 10 pm. I have never held the same job for more than a year because I get bored. I broke a part of a very cool old sewing machine in a stunningly dumb shit moment a few months ago. I probably need to schedule an annual exam but don't know how long it's actually been since my last one. The damn grass is a week overdue for a trim.

Okay, I'm probably fine. We won't go so far as to claim normal (I don't like that term anyway), but let's go with fine. I'll power through the rest of this week, and hopefully next week - when I'm a doctoral candidate, knock on wood - the warm fuzzy feelings will have returned.

In the meantime, Twelve, that's your last last warning: Stop drooling on me and go away!

*According to her pediatrician, Twelve was "five nine and a smidge" last week. Basketball camp is the second week in June: Scouts, take notice!