Just Planning My Midlife Crisis, That's All, Nothing to See Here

I've been planning my midlife crisis for a few years now. It's mostly a joke that when Twelve turns eighteen and moves out, I'll only be 38, and able to do all the things I haven't been able to do whilst being a single parent: Travel a lot, have an adorable little two-seater classic car that I restored myself, and live in a fabulous Manhattan apartment with high ceilings and original moldings. Think half Friends and half Kathleen Kelly's life in You've Got Mail, except that I don't know where I'll work now that Fox Books has taken over everything. (Yes, I need a long-lost uncle to die suddenly, leaving me the only heir to his ethically accumulated fortune.)

Recently I realized that there's another layer to my little fan fiction. I'll have spent eighteen years teaching Twelve how to live without me, but I'm not sure I'll know how to go about living without Twelve. 

I certainly could have lived without Twelve this past weekend; two no-school days plus two regularly-scheduled weekend days equals YOU'RE DRIVING ME UP THE WALL. Long weekends with Twelve have been a bad idea since she was about six. If we have something to do or somewhere to go, we're fine, but if we're just at home, by Sunday afternoon we're both in need of diversion. She needs other people and I need her to go away.

We've been working on the concept of good attention vs. bad attention: She sort of gets that when she wanders out of her room and speaks to me without interrupting (just because you came to a good stopping point in your Harry Potter re-reading marathon does not mean that I am at a good stopping point in whatever I'm doing), I am more than happy to chat. She must understand by now that when she interrupts me, plops down on my lap, and farts, I am not interested in chatting and am probably still irritated at being interrupted in the first place.

Somehow, and apparently this is due to faulty wiring in the adolescent brain, she doesn't always know or care about the difference between good and bad attention. Even though she's often perfectly pleasant to hang out with, I'm becoming less and less tolerant of this kind of intentionally annoying behavior. I've gotten pretty good at the standing lap dump, in which you simultaneously detach hands from clothing or body parts while standing up from the big blue chair, depositing the annoying farter on the floor.

Similarly, being startled by Twelve's maniacally grinning face every time I come up the stairs gets old fast over the course of four days. It's like Ramona's father's grandmother would have said: First time is funny, second time is silly, third time I'm taking away your iPod.

Again, much of the time she's a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and I have no doubt that she'll be just fine when she fledges. She'll do better than Rachel Green, at least; no matching pink marshmallow Peep laundry for her. With her well-developed sense of how things ought to be and the confidence to say so, I can just imagine her making impassioned speeches about any perceived injustice. She already says I'm far too nice to incompetent people, like the person who completely forgot to turn in my time sheet this month. My approach, given that I need to work with this person for the rest of the year: It's not a total emergency, since I noticed it in time and my landlord hasn't cashed my rent check yet, but can you help me figure out what's going on here? Twelve's approach, definitively stated: I would just tell her off.

So, when Twelve is off conquering the world (oh god, I hope she uses her powers for good instead of for evil), what will I do? I will enjoy the uninterrupted quiet, that's for sure, and perhaps I will regain the ability to focus on something for longer than seventeen minutes at a time. When I feel the need to interact with other humans I will call one of them on the phone and we will meet for a nice cocktail. When I want to leave town for the night or the week or the month, I'll just do it. I will use my passport for something other than helping to justify the file folder marked 'Important.' No more asking friends and family if Twelve can stay with them while I go off to a conference, a wedding, or simply to spend time in the company of adults. No one will demand that we go grocery shopping because we're out of organic sliced processed ham food product; in fact, I think I'll just eat out all the time, except for toast. And tea. The markup on tea bags in restaurants is something like five hundred percent. Unless the water is very hot, it's a fancy loose-leaf tea, and you get your own little tea pot, cup, saucer, spoon, and a little dish to set the strainer in, you're just getting ripped off. 

The problem with my midlife crisis plan as it's currently written is that I'll want to do all those things with Twelve. Between our school schedules, her visits to her dad, and my lack of funds, we've done very little traveling together. We're both bummed that she can't come with me and R to a friend's wedding in Mexico during her winter break, and whenever I squeeze a weekend trip with friends out of my budget, she's always annoyed that she's not invited. With occasional exceptions, she's included in whatever local outings she's allowed and wants to do. Tomorrow I'm meeting up with friends to watch the election unfold at a pub down the street, and Twelve is planning to come along. Granted, she just wants carte blanche from the happy hour menu, but still; these are some nerdy-ass people and it can't help but be a more enriching experience than re-Kindle-ing Harry Potter.

I am not worried too much about traveling with or without Twelve. We'll do that if we want, not that we'll be able to afford it. I'm more concerned that I'm going to demand too much of Twelve once she's moved out. I don't want a reversal of our current roles in which I'm the one ignoring the distinction between good and bad attention. I don't want to annoy her, farting pathetically, until she dumps me onto the floor. I want to do interesting things with my life and let her call me when she's particularly proud of having verbally triumphed over some jerk or another. I want to click 'like' when her Facebook status update is that she aced yet another philosophy essay.

Ah, that's what it is. I want the apple to fall just the perfect distance from the tree: Far enough to know you're not part of it anymore, but close enough to appreciate where you came from.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

This morning I went to parent-teacher conferences. I'm going to skip the part about how parent-teacher conferences are constructed by Twelve's school in a manner that is almost completely inaccessible to working and/or single parents, and get to the part about abstinence-based sex education.

Going around the room, Twelve's teachers all said pretty much the same thing: She's smart, doesn't always attend to detail or try very hard, and talks too much in class. No surprises there. She's a great kid, smiles a lot, has a great peer group. Yup, I knew that too.

What I didn't know until I met with her PE teacher is that when sex ed is covered in health class next year, she'll be taught that sex is stupid. Okay, I'm with you at this point, and I actually agree that it's stupid for eighth graders to be having sex, but tell me more. Oh, it's abstinence-based? How so? It gives them info on contraception, right? Okay, go get the curriculum, I'll wait here. Hmmm ... protection and contraception methods are covered as an afterthought in lesson seven? You refer to them as 'safer stupid'?

At this point I'm trying very hard not to panic and just focusing on not alienating this guy. The PE/health teacher is a nice enough young man, and I'm sure that when he mentioned 'protecting one's reputation' as one of the reasons why eighth graders should refrain from sex, he meant to reassure me about the thoroughness of the curriculum. He probably wasn't expecting me to ask him if he plans to cover the gendered sexual double standard and women's double bind, since he looked at me blankly and asked what I meant.

Mind you, when faced with utter ignorance, my policy is to practice the flies-with-honey approach when at all possible, and I had had my tea by this time, so I paused for a bit of mental rummaging-around. 

How do you convey ten weeks' worth of information, discussion, and in-class exercises into a ten-second sound bite? This guy hadn't even read the assigned readings in preparation for our discussion! I backed way up and just started blabbering. "Like how when boys sleep around they're considered studs, but when girls do the same way, they're called a whole list of derogatory names." Tracking with me here, he nodded thoughtfully, and made a connection to how they had been talking about body image the week prior, and he had pointed out to the class that body image is a bigger deal for girls than for boys.

Bingo. 

It was rather precious, actually; he had the same reaction as Twelve's kindergarten teacher the day that she realized that the day's story did, in fact, contain a gender stereotype. The Dawn of Awareness, I'll call it. No, that's too strong a term. The Beginnings of an Inkling of Awareness is more like it.

I can work with this.

I consider it a privilege to be present at such moments, and I'd hate to puncture anyone's burgeoning awareness bubble, so I left it with a brief mention of my masters degree and offering to be a resource for incorporating an awareness of gender into the curriculum. I didn't bother to explain that femininity and masculinity are social constructs of the meanings of biological sexual differences, I just said that there are lots of things that we all know and that we just don't have the terms to articulate them yet. He seemed receptive enough, so we'll see how it goes.

Of course I daydreamed about possible in-class activities all the way home: I think eighth graders could handle the gender box exercise, where things that are okay for girls are written inside the girl box and things that are not okay for girls are written outside, and vice verse for the boy box. The 'sit like a boy/sit like a girl' activity would work just fine - it's one of my favorites because it's so simple, yet so profound - and I betcha they could generate lists of terms that are applied to promiscuous individuals of each gender. I dunno if they'll let me guest-lecture - Twelve, I'm sure, would be appalled at the very thought - but at least I won't be blindsided next year during Curriculum Night.

When I got home, Twelve asked what her teachers had said about her. I asked what she thought they said, and she grinned. "I talk too much?"

See? SMART.

Fun with Seventh Graders [or] Packing Our Invisible Knapsacks

After school last week, I had the privilege of driving Twelve and three of her friends across town to put together 1200 goody bags to get ready for some sort of Harry Potter event. I had a wonderful time, strangely enough, and it was a stellar example of how social class privilege reproduces itself. (Yes, some of us are incapable of having a good time without analyzing everything.)

Fun first: These girls are a total kick in the pants. In the span of maybe 20 minutes (I drove slowly), topics ranged from how Twelve and I look like sisters to how they're not sure about the boy Twelve has a crush on because he uses bad language. I can't even begin to describe the conversation; I was trying mightily to enjoy it fully while remembering everything so I could write about it later, which I never do very well.

A small recording device would come in very handy sometimes.

I was tickled pink about the whole situation for at least two reasons: The girls were talking candidly in the presence of an adult, which I doubt very much will continue very much longer, and they were being distinctly critical of a popular boy because he used 'the word that starts with W and rhymes with door.' He was apparently tossing this term around in Twelve's direction. Granted, I'm critical of anyone who calls people whores, too, but I don't necessarily expect seventh graders to hold their peers to such a high standard. It was incredibly cute how earnestly and innocently appalled they were. Suspicious of the flippant nature of the name-calling incident, I asked the girls if they thought that he knows what that word means. No, they replied, but he has two older brothers who teach him all kinds of stuff, so he probably learned it from them. 

Sensing a teachable moment, I added that it's not necessarily a problem to know the words - Twelve has known all the words for a really long time - it's just a problem if one doesn't know how to use the words only in appropriate contexts. Twelve is technically allowed to use whatever language she wants at home, although she doesn't take advantage of that freedom very often. Our joke is that I better not get any phone calls from school about her using 'bad' words, and the fact that this is a shared joke indicates that she's on board. 

Ah, I am in such a bubble of pre-adolescent bliss.

Twelve has always been exposed to a great deal of very adult conversation, both in the terms used and in the topics discussed, and I've done that very intentionally: I want her to know what's going on. I know the feeling of not getting whatever other people are talking about; not knowing what 'boner' meant in seventh grade caused me at least one miserable class period, and just the other day I had to consult Urban Dictionary to grasp the point of a Facebook comment thread about feltching.

Note: I do not recommend finding out what feltching is.

Anyway, we proceeded to the event center, and I walked the girls inside. One of the girls' dads is the director of the whole department, which is how this whole thing came about, and it happens to be the first place I worked after college (the first time), so I know the woman who runs the center. As the girls introduced themselves and were shown to their work area, it dawned on me that this is exactly how the intangible aspects of class privilege accrue. Being behind the scenes of a cultural event held at a major state university's conference center auditorium provides tidbits of information about things that members of the privileged class know and take for granted:

• Stately buildings exist for the sole purpose of gathering well-dressed people for cultural and intellectual pursuits. 
• It’s someone’s job to organize everything and delegate responsibility, and there are other people whose job it is to do what she says. 
• The person in charge wears her choice of professional clothing and shoes, and the other people wear matching polo shirts, khaki pants, and serviceable shoes. 
• Vendor areas are common to such events, and each space is delineated by a system of ‘pipe and drape’ (which is exactly what it sounds like). 
• Clean water is available via several drinking fountains. 
• Clean restrooms, always fully stocked, are located to the left and right.

What am I missing? I don’t know; I’m sure there’s an equally long list of things of which I’m completely unaware.

Twelve, having attended many events at that particular venue, already had a great deal of the kind of context that helps you soak up even more information, and the process will continue until her invisible knapsack is fully stocked. 

Sisterly Advice

My little sister called me this afternoon for a chat. She calls on a regular basis during her commute to work, usually just to check in, sometimes to ask, like she did last week, what Twelve wants for the holidays (what is it with people planning holiday gifts two months ahead of time?), and occasionally for advice. 

A bit of background on my baby sister: She's twenty-six, six-foot-one, and outweighs me by a good 20 pounds of muscle. She graduated from high school as valedictorian/class president/queen of all the heteronormative celebrations, went directly to college from which she graduated in exactly four years, got married to the guy she'd gone out on a first date with ON VALENTINE'S DAY, was recruited to do the job she'd gone to college for, and had a baby approximately four days after they paid off their student loans. She's your basic poster child for doing everything by the book, and she tries to humor her crazy big sister.

I, the big sister who accidentally dropped the damn book in the toilet right after high school, try not to be condescending about her lack of real-world experience, even though she somehow manages to be condescending about the subjects of my graduate studies.

Since I am apparently the closest thing she has to a professional woman mentor, the advice phone calls started shortly after she started her job. We talked about things like not letting your employer take advantage of you and how to bring workload issues up in a productive way: I'm finding that task x is taking me longer than we anticipated, which leaves less time time for activity y.

She caught on fast, gained confidence as she went along, and successfully negotiated an acceptable part-time arrangement after the baby was born. She and her husband are able to arrange their work schedules so that, with a bit of help from the grandparents, they don't need outside childcare: He works in the mornings, she works in the afternoons.

Today, she called to talk about the fact that it's not working very well; her husband is often late getting home, so she's late to work frequently enough that people are starting to notice. My sister is Type A enough that this bothers her a lot, and my suspicion is that her husband tends to brush it off because he know she's more tightly strung in this regard than he is.

However, this whole thing is a much bigger deal than occasionally being a few minutes late to work. As I explained to my sister, working mothers are held to a higher standard than non-mothers. It's entirely unfair, of course, but it's a real phenomenon. It's not just about you, personally, either, I continued. You're representing all working women. Just as people of color understand that any social transgression - chewing open-mouthed, being late for a meeting, laughing too loudly or interrupting too much - may be taken as an indictment of their entire race, so must working mothers be particularly careful. Because society has defined the ideal worker as someone who is free of household or familial responsibility and the ideal mother as someone who is 100% focused on her children, employed women are presumed to be insufficiently committed to their jobs unless they perform perfectly. No one performs perfectly, of course, but mothers tend not to be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like being late.

This isn't really making me feel any better, my sister replied with the barest hint of sarcasm. She had caught me in the act of climbing up on this particular soapbox. I chuckled, and changed course to the advice part, which is easy. The problem is a logistical one - it's not about what either of them are doing or intending, it's about the fact that they need more transition time. My brother-in-law has the flexibility to start work earlier and get home earlier, and it's time to take advantage of that. My sister just needs to initiate a conversation that doesn't accuse him of being a lazy, inconsiderate jerk and that does include a possible solution: Ya know what? We've been trying it this way, and it isn't working. Let's try giving ourselves more time! She seemed relieved to realize that the solution was so simple, and I suggested that she discuss the working mothers' unfairly higher standard as a rhetorical buttress.

I may also have offered to come give my brother-in-law a PowerPoint presentation on the social construction of motherhood and ideal worker norms.

For me, this conversation was a triple win: I love being asked for advice, I am thrilled when I get to provide a useful solution, and my sister is showing signs of taking one of my professional interests seriously.

Now I'm starting with the ahead-of-time holiday gift ideas: The Dialectic of Sex for my sister and Unbending Gender: How Work and Family Conflict and What to Do About It for my brother-in-law. 

[insert sarcastically evil chuckle here]

Luddite and Okay With It

I got an out-of-the-blue email from my ex the other day, saying that he knows that we don't usually coordinate holiday gifts, but that they're giving Twelve the headphones that she wants and he just wants to make sure we don't both give them to her. As far as I know, he's referring to the brightly colored Beats by Dre headphones that retail for approximately my entire monthly grocery budget.

I haven't replied to the email, because the response that comes to mind is something along the lines of YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME IF YOU THINK I CAN AFFORD THREE HUNDRED DOLLAR HEADPHONES.

I don't mind the headphones themselves, actually; I like the bright colors, I appreciate their fresh design, and I presume that they're relatively high quality. I don't think that a) teenagers can appreciate the difference in audio quality or b) that it matters, given the crappy music they listen to, but I'm not holding that against the product itself. I just hope Twelve gets the color she wants - and that the color she wants doesn't change between the time she puts in her order and when she gets them.

The thing that annoys me (secondarily to my ex being a douche canoe) is that I am aware of this product's existence.

Knowing more than I want to about various aspects of popular culture is, I've concluded, a byproduct of having an adolescent daughter. We were watching all the LMFAO videos the other night (some of them are just dumb, but I adore the satirical portrayal of men waggling their secondary sex characteristics around in public), and Twelve pointed out all the Beats by Dre headphones - sorry, they're referred to as Beats, I looked it up - in the video. 

I like being clueless about the newest trendy gadget that I can't afford and didn't know I needed (hellooo, iThings). I pride myself on not knowing the latest teenage singers or current television offerings. I keep track of my schedule in an actual notebook, using an actual pencil that periodically needs sharpening in an actual pencil sharpener. I read real books. I still don't have a smartphone, for Pete's sake (and I just used the expression 'for Pete's sake').

So, it's pretty galling to know about Twilight, One Direction, several of the identikit young teenage girl musicians who have come (and not necessarily gone) in the last few years, and those doggone Nike Elite socks. 

It's an imperfect and inconsistent cluelessness, of course. I resolutely avoided finding out who Lady Gaga was for an admirably long time, but then when I finally gave in and watched all of her videos, I loved them (because awesome). I scoff at the latest ridiculous fashion trends only unless I really like something, like legwarmers, of which I made four pairs last night out of sweater sleeves, because that's how I roll. Granted, I checked the internet and I am not the first person who realized that legwarmers and sleeves are similarly shaped, but my version (that uses the band at the hem of the sweater to finish the cut-off end of the sleeve) is by far the best if I do say so myself. I started a doctorate program in an apparel design department with no clue that premium denim was a thing (irony!), and three years later all my jeans are Paige, Joe's, and Habitual.

Twelve's home from school now, so I'm off to get her to troubleshoot this outfit for me; the legwarmers are working with my Cate the Great boots, but I don't like what's going on above the knee.

Parenting, Krupnik Style

My parenting heroes are Katherine and Myron Krupnik. You know, Anastasia's parents. You've met them, right? From the Lois Lowry novels? I've been thinking about how I've been meaning to write about the smiles that Twelve and I have shared when she's done or said something particularly Anastasia-like: Complaining about her oily hair and being embarrassment about my existence. I absolutely love it that we have Anastasia as a common reference; it means I don't have to inflict the Twilight novels on myself to have something in common with Twelve, and I cherish those shared smiles.

Because who knows how much longer we'll have them.

Last night, I realized that in addition to being charming and hysterically funny, the Anastasia books are useful parenting manuals. Anastasia's parents always seem to respond effectively to whatever adolescent nonsense she manages to throw at them. Because I have a policy of not changing my dissertation topic every time a new and exciting idea presents itself, I can't do a proper analysis, but this is a good excuse to jot down a few examples of how my parenting style has been influenced by my favorite fictional family. 

When Anastasia wanders into the room, her parents pay attention to her. Sometimes they carry on with what they're doing, sometimes they stop, but they almost always engage her in conversation. The dinner table is a place to discuss Anastasia's problems and, occasionally, make lists of possible solutions. I am not always great at either of these things - I try to strike a balance between being available and teaching Twelve that it's rude to interrupt - but I have learned that there's magic in follow-up questions, even on the most inane topics. If I bring something up, I get a dismissive one-word reply, but if she mentions something, I can usually gently encourage her to keep talking. As annoying as driving to and from volleyball practice can be, we can't do much other than chat during that time, and she'll often pipe up with something that's on her mind.

The Krupniks take Anastasia and her feelings seriously, even when she's being ridiculous. When she asks her father to take her to the store to buy a goldfish for their new neighbor, Myron agrees, no questions asked. When she tells her mother that she's afraid that she's going to have to marry Robert Giannini, Katherine listens to her concerns and provides useful perspective and advice. Katherine indulges her daughter's feelings that her hair is too oily by offering a new bottle of shampoo.

At the same time that they're taking her seriously, Myron and Katherine tease Anastasia and allow her to tease them back. When Anastasia is melodramatically acting out death scenes and says that she's, like Cleopatra (presumably), clasping an asp to her bosom, Katherine points out that it "must have been a heck of a disappointment for the asp. You hardly even have a bosom." Anastasia chucks a pillow at her mother, and (after a few groaning lessons - Anastasia had been pronouncing the word 'groan' instead of actually groaning) they discuss Anastasia's feelings over coffee and Kool-Aid. Twelve and I tease each other constantly. She's getting pretty good at it, too.

The senior Krupniks allow Anastasia to make as many choices as possible without letting her yank them around; Anastasia decides for herself whether or not to go to California for an aunt's funeral, but within an appropriate time frame. They go out of their way to solicit Anastasia's contributions on matters large and small. Katherine even asks her where a particular bowl should go in the cabinets when they're moving into their new house; it's a tiny thing, and it was asked as a side note when Anastasia came into the room to say she misses her old wallpaper, but it's a clear example of how her parents make Anastasia feel like a participating member of the household. Then, Katherine validates Anastasia's feelings by offering to find out if the wallpaper is still available for her new room. I do this kind of thing as much as possible. It helps that Twelve is an only child and that R is not her parent, but I try to treat her like a roommate as much as I can. A roommate I have authority over, but who gets to weigh in on certain household decisions: We are currently competing with ourselves to see how long we can go without firing up the furnace - I'm not sure why.

Katherine and Myron are always realistic and honest, and occasionally meta: The chances of Anastasia being discovered by the film industry during a two-day visit to LA are, as Katherine says in one humorous exchange, zero. Then, when Anastasia complains that her mom could have been more supportive, Katherine explains her parenting approach: "I'm being honest, and honesty is supportive." I feel like it's important for adolescents to understand why parents do what they do. I often tell Twelve things like, I've already told you x and I need to be consistent, so please don't ask again.

The Krupnik household has a clear intellectual focus. Myron responds to Anastasia's chronic overuse of the word 'weird' by listing a few the possible synonyms ("PHANTASMAGORICAL!"), and when Anastasia mentions Cosmo, he rhetorically points out that the family subscribes to a variety of high quality material. I bribed Twelve with cold, hard cash last summer to break herself of the habit of, like, saying 'like' every, like, other word (which worked, and raised her apparent IQ by about twenty points), and I keep trying to casually hand her the latest issue of our state Historical Quarterly journal. I think she might have flipped through one, once. The Krupnik parents and I share, I'm sure, a sense of resignation regarding adolescent interests.

I know, I know; I left out at least one major theme, and I didn't cite my sources or give page numbers of quoted material. There isn't even a Works Cited section! Luckily, diaries are not peer-reviewed or examined by committee members, and it's your loss if you haven't yet read the Anastasia books, so I don't care.

I'm going to take another look at my dissertation outline now. I doubt that I can work in an Anastasia reference, but I'll try.

Interstitial Parenting, Part Six: Materialism

When I was a few years younger than Twelve, I wanted a certain pair of LA Gear shoes. High tops, with the twisty leather 'flame' detail on the sides. Hot pink and ... was it purple? Hang on, let me look this up ...

Green. Looks like the color combos were hot pink and lime green or purple and black ... eww, I had forgotten about the velcro strap across the top. Wait a minute ... NO FREAKING WAY! They're making a 20th anniversary version! Hang on, this is too funny, let me post it on Facebook ...

Anyway, I wanted those shoes something fierce. I was dead set on the particulars, too. A friend got the low top ones because she had broken her leg or something and the high tops didn't fit with her cast, and I just could not believe that she had settled for the low tops.

I never did get them; my family wasn't particularly wealthy and any extra cash was devoted to the pursuits of the head of household, not to the desires of the children's hearts. His stinginess didn't matter so much at the time because I was homeschooled and there wasn't anyone to impress. When I started junior high, though, it would have been nice to have the right clothes and shoes, and by 'it would have been nice' I mean 'it would have made a huge difference and maybe I wouldn't have felt so much like a complete dork and utter outsider.'

In principle, I am now smugly opposed to excessive material goods. I believe that the truly important things in life are relationships, anything sewn by hand, and delicate pink depression glass cocktail glasses. It drives me nuts that Twelve wants a Coach wallet and a Juicy Couture charm bracelet, partly because both are ghastly, but mostly because she's been trained to desire brand names rather than to assess aesthetic value.

In reality, I recognize that having certain personal artifacts helps Twelve fit in with her peers. This is why I don't mind so much that she has an iPod touch, a Kindle, two pairs of Toms (don't get me started on Toms), and a pair of Nikes that I think have a name but are basically just very brightly colored sneakers. This is why, for her birthday, I gave her a pair of socks that cost fourteen dollars and are JUST SOCKS. They are not even good Smartwool socks with cushion and warmth. They are regular old basketball socks with a bizarrely skeletal design, but they are all the rage, apparently, and the gift was a success. I'm not thrilled with the iPod because, okay, I'm a bit of a Luddite and I want her to interact more in three dimensions. I've made my peace with it because it helps her stay in touch with people and because there's not a lot I can do about it, but it's an uneasy truce that I'm not quite sure about. 

Thankfully, I suppose, Twelve gets the really expensive stuff from her dad, and thankfully she's perceptive enough to be more appreciative of $14 socks from me than of $140 shoes from him. We've even begun to joke about how she basically puts in her orders for birthday and holiday gifts ahead of time. 

I'd like for my daughter to scoff at people who slavishly follow fashion. I'd like her to try to develop her own style or pick one of the non-mainstream ones; gothic, perhaps, or punk, or just brightly colored hair. If nothing else, I'd like her to be an early adopter, and be dedicated to knowing about and wearing the freshest fashions before anyone else. Instead, Twelve fits in. She's cool.

I ask Twelve questions about her experiences at school and with friends mostly because I want to have a sense of how she spends her days and with whom, but there's a wistful undercurrent there, too.

I'd like to know what it's like to be cool.