I'm Mean And I Don't Get It

Puberty is hell, especially when it’s not yours. You may think it can’t be worse than going through it yourself, but unless you are a perimenopausal woman with a pubescent daughter, you have no idea what hormonal hell really is. The mood swings, the acne, the attitude…and that’s just me! You ought to see my daughter!

Julia keeps telling me I don’t get it, and you know what? Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I don’t get it. I don’t get why she is so snotty, and I don’t get why she cannot remember anything except the words to her favorite songs. I don’t get why it takes her all the time she has in the morning to get ready, plus an extra ten minutes so that we are late, no matter how early I get her up. If she has 30 minutes, she takes 40. If she has an hour, she takes an hour and ten minutes. And what I really don’t get is the total loss of the ability to communicate. I’m not sure which one of us has lost it, but there’s definitely a problem. Here is a typical scene at the local ice rink, where my figure skating daughter spends a lot of time:

She walks down to the ice, then comes back up, and stands in front of me. Her eyes dart anxiously to and fro, her brow furrowed. “I have a problem.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Shhhh!” she says, eyes moving even more frantically. Angrily she jerks her head at the nearest group of people, who are two tables away and talking loudly in Chinese.

“Honey, they can’t possibly hear me.”

“Mom, stop!” She’s looking really distressed now.

“OK,” I whisper, “What do you need?”

“Stop looking like that, and be quiet!”

I school my face to be as neutral as possible, and as close to ventriloquism as I can muster, I whisper even more quietly, “Are you going to tell ‘e ut is the ‘atter?”

“Mom, please!”

“ ‘Isser in ny ear,” I suggest.

“Oh my gosh, you just don’t get it!” she exclaims, hands clutching her temples in anguish.

Now people are looking.

So I say nothing, waiting patiently for her to tell me what’s bothering her. I look at her with an expectant, encouraging expression.

“Well, aren’t you going to help me?” she says accusingly, throwing up her hands in frustration.

“Julia,” I say in a quiet but normal voice, “I’d be happy to help you with whatever is bothering you, but if you don’t tell me, I can’t do that. Nobody can hear us, but your dramatics are calling more attention than anything else. Sit down and talk to me.

“Why do you always have to be like that?” she says, clearly furious with me.

Be like what? Concerned? Helpful? Normal? Now I’m starting to lose patience with the guessing game. “Look, Julia, if you need to talk to me about something, then I’m listening. Otherwise, get down to the ice and warm up. You have a lesson in five minutes.”

“You don’t have to be so mean! Just nevermind!” she says loudly, and stomps off to the ice.

Several parents look our way, and I can see their thoughts in little bubbles above their heads. “Oh, that mean old mother just can’t get along with her daughter.” “Not a nice, respectful girl, like my daughter.” “Tsk. Must be a dysfunctional family. How sad.” I turn away and look down at the ice, where my daughter is smiling and laughing with a friend between salchows and toe loops.

Laughing out loud, I think “She’s schizophrenic!”

When I was a kid, I remember thinking to myself that I would never forget how it felt to be that age, and that when I was a parent, I would remember and be very understanding.

But somehow, after all those new neuropathways of adolescence are through developing, some sense of the anguish is lost. I remember with a grown up mind, not the mind of someone whose body is morphing into some unknown territory. Well, actually, my body is morphing, too, but in a less pleasing way. And I’m pretty sure I know what it’s morphing into.

But back to Julia. I am trying very hard to be supportive, but also to keep her to boundaries. We can rage against the world, but we can’t punch our little brothers for laughing about our bra. We can throw ourselves on our bed in inexplicable tears, but we can’t scream at a baffled Daddy “Go away, you big poop!”. We can hate our math homework, but we can’t expect to understand how to do it when we spend the entire class time drawing pictures of the math teacher hanging from a noose. It’s fairly simple, it seems, but I guess that’s because I’m all developed neurologically, and everything. At least for now.