on teenagers

and what I won’t believe

I refuse to believe in teenagers as monsters. in the same way I don't believe aliens want to abduct us (for what?!), I don't believe sharks want to kill us (not worth the hassle) — I don't believe the baby I held at my breast, the woman blooming before me, wants to hurt us. wants to hurt me.

the most menacing thing the teenagers in our lives do is humble us. show us everything we don't know. hold our faces in their hands and turn us to look at what we do know but don’t like to admit.

the most terrifying thing they do is make eye contact with us as they discover the beautiful horrors of being human, the things we spent the last decade and more accidentally and intentionally hiding from them.

they take the parenting books we read and light them up with their rage as they grow wise enough to realize the world is on fire around them.

I, a woman who became a mother with reluctance, now enjoy the sisterhood of tongue-clicking and eyebrow-raising. I love the solidarity of unspoken and spoken words of affirmation.

"my child refuses to, asks to, tried to, is going through."

'mmmmmhmmmm.' we respond in our most aggressively sympathetic tone. 'i see you' we imply with our sharpest intake of breath.

to clarify, my wordless salute isn't to affirm the egregiousness of what our teens are doing to us.

it is, instead, a refusal to be triggered by my own ego as I witness a person grow more powerful in their being.

it's a deep sigh, exhaled into all the lost moments. the should-have-done, the is-it-too-late-yet, the how-did-I-get-here.

the sighs and the sounds are my way of holding your hand, holding my own heart, as I am forced to witness like a dream the way her dimpled knuckles grew into a powerful fist.

my way of holding back and holding us up as we see the way her simple tears of infant hunger grew into tears of understanding the delicious pang of the bittersweet.

my way of laughing into the void instead of screaming. of smiling through the pain. of opening my inner thoughts and the inside of my purse to another mother.

can I offer you some chapstick? a pile of napkins? do you need some ibuprofen? something stronger, perhaps? like the validation of your darkest fears? I have all of that and more for you in here.

these nods to my sisters in the struggle are my way of remembering how messy things can get before they get easier.

remember labor? it was so loud and wet and painful. and look at us now, that gooey screaming baby and me. sharing a joke in the bathroom mirror as we both brush our hair, her towering over me by several inches.

I refuse to believe in teenagers as monsters. in the same way I don't want to believe you meant what you said that time. the way I don’t trust my 3am thoughts. in the same spirit of denial of as when say I’m fine when I’m not fine with the trust that I will be. it will be.