Daughter On The Couch

 Daughter lying on the couch, fully dressed under a red queen size comforter.

How hard it was for me to get up this morning, having stayed up late while the daughter finished a composition assignment, using the computer in our bedroom. I want to move that computer I thought last night. But I got up and dragged myself into the bathroom...I have my routine and making breakfast for this teen daughter is part of it. Put away dishes, set the table, put on a pot of oatmeal, wake the daughter, do last night's dishes. I am organized and intense about getting her to school on time. Part of the routine is this daughter telling me it will be fine and she won't be late. This morning, she comes into the kitchen quicker than usual. She has cramps so bad, she feels like throwing up.

Daughter lying on the couch under a red queen size comforter.

I tell her she can stay home from school. She swallows two Ibuprofen and makes her way to the couch. She never wants to listen to her mother about natural remedies for menstrual cramps. I then give her some calcium/magnesium and ask if she wants to try the heating pad. To my surprise, she says yes. When I put the heating pad on and it works to soothe the cramps, she is amazed. I guess moms can be right once in awhile.

Daughter sleeping on the couch under a comforter.

I call my daughter's school to say she isn't feeling well. I've done my running around this morning, so now there is no need to hurry. Time is an odd dimension. I frantically race against it, and then at times like these it spits itself back up at me. Suddenly, I am gripped by panic. I look at my daughter's tender, still childlike face and wish her growing up didn't tear into my heart, but it does. I always yearn to wrap her in cellophane against outside contamination. Maybe I really need to wrap myself up. We had this talk last night about the tedium of high school and the choice-less future of college. On the one hand she will mention a yearning to attend an incredible college such as Sarah Lawrence and then she will retreat into not wanting to enter the academic world at all. When I ask her what she needs, she ends by stating: “I want out of school; I want to drop out.”

Daughter sleeping on the couch.

I put a load of laundry in and prepare for my tutoring sessions. I check my e-mail and continue to be seized by a searing sadness. In an e-mail to a friend I write HOW MY DAUGHTER HAS ALL THIS TALENT and I worry that she won't use it. I quickly realize it is me who is not using my talent and I add this revelation to the e-mail and send it off. I have been inside this deep well for weeks now: continuing to struggle with my purpose, continuing to see how much time I do have to write, wondering why I complain when I have so much to be grateful for. I don't want to get old, but the years are passing by and I am approaching sixty this next year. I am caught in a domestic routine of my own making. I love my home and I love my family, but sometimes I just want to run naked down the neighborhood streets and declare my crazy uniqueness for all to see. But I am very private about my body, so streaking won't work.

Daughter sleeping.

The sadness lifts and then comes back. I want to move my daughter to a bed, but she is at peace. I say and do all the wrong things now, and wish I had a magic wand. When she was little she loved dressing up and being a fairy or a magician or a witch. During middle school she dressed in nothing but black; I had to bite my tongue. She wanted to fade, to not be seen, she told me. My stomach twisted and turned then more than it ever has. But she added color and created her own persona through her clothing choices, I finally let my breath out. She is a slender five foot nine, with auburn hair, blue eyes and strikingly beautiful. Like her mother she is a feminist who doesn't buy into the beauty media crap. But her beauty stuns me. I sometimes wish I knew what it was like to have such beauty.

I hear my daughter breathing. The oatmeal is cold. I gather fresh laundry from the dryer and it is warm against my breasts. The sun is streaming in through the kitchen window and maybe I can thaw out this aching. The phone rings and it is my first tutoring session. A family emergency cancels this session for today, and time spits up at me again. I am writing and hoping the words will bandage my hurts. I have it all, except for money and fame. My shallowness surprises me as I grow older. I should know better now and yet I still enjoy new clothes or trying to create an outward characterization of who I aspire to be. I want to be unique and yet hip. But I will never be cool in any sense. I have always felt and been different, and now I wish this wasn't so. I understand my daughter's pain at being an individual in a high school that praises conformity. Her steering away from college is only a symptom of her creative, artistic spirit.

Daughter sleeping.

Our daughter is more talented, intelligent and creative than either Dan or I. Or maybe it's just that she had a childhood of constant encouragement, support and loving nurturance. Dan and I were loved, but not necessarily encouraged. Critique runs in my family and I have seen it seep out of my mouth and into my own home. I worry that the father and mother inside me have contaminated my parenting. I have given her all I have and then some. I have worked on stepping back to the sidelines as she has become a teenager. I know my love can be over-abundant and still I don't know if she understands how much we do love and support her. We have been democratic and alternative parents...like many baby boomers who ran through the idealism of the sixties and have tried to pass this on to our kin.

Daughter waking.

The sun is warming the table where I sit. My daughter is stirring. What time is it, she wonders as she strolls into the kitchen. She has slept for several hours and I ask if she now wants breakfast. Sure, she says. I reheat the oatmeal and she sits down across from me. She tells me again the heating pad worked and she will use it again in the future. Score one for mom. I have to put a hold on my writing but feel more awake than I did in the early hour of the darker morning. I have had some chocolate and a cup of warm Inka. I thought the chocolate would do the trick, but the heavy emotions linger. My daughter's face of contentment as she eats reassures my mothering instincts. She moves into our “star room” and I bring the comforter to her. This “star room” used to be her bedroom when she was small. It has those glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and now contains all her childhood storybooks on the shelves. She has grown up into the sky-lighted attic bedroom. But I note that whenever she doesn't feel well, she curls up on the futon couch in her old room.

Daughter watching a movie.

I return from walking our dog with the sadness and the uncertainty of who I am shed like a layer of first skin. And this is it. I will never stop shedding my skin day in and day out. I love having my daughter home from school. I love having a moment here and there to mother her. I remember now part of our conversation from last night. She mentioned how every day at least ten times a day she hears, “Oh that's so gay!” and every day at least once a day she hears the word, “fag or faggot.” I say how as a teacher I always stood up to these comments and how people need to make people aware. But I didn't mean this comment to be directed at my daughter. “I can't reprimand people all day long,” she says. I know...But I plead the stupidity and unfounded homophobic fear of humans. She is quiet and I am quiet. This lesbian, queer identified daughter is beautiful beyond words. I cannot save her from the world. But I wish I could.

Daughter

By evening my daughter is feeling better and I am too. She has basked in my nurturance and I have basked in her presence. “I know we often don't agree, but I do love you,” she shares. I understand the deep divide a mother and daughter must walk across; each reaching her own path on the other side. I wobble as I walk, but I am making it. I have reacted and taken comments far too personally. But I have grown and am growing. She does her homework and comes downstairs to say good night. I give her the biggest hug I can muster with an added kiss on the cheek. She smiles. I know I could have slept in this morning, buy I'm glad I didn't.