Last week I walked into my 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom, an occasion equivalent in a teenager’s life to an armed invasion. There I sat down, wound myself up, and started in on it.
I had allowed — indeed, encouraged — her to join the brilliant cast of a marvelous play with two weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of performances, and now I was afraid. Yes, I want her to pursue her passion, realize her potential, follow her heart, live life, have fun, be herself, yes, yes, I want all that, but the sky was suddenly clouded by the ominous shadow of late nights, missed school, botched tests, tardy term papers and the pitch-black importance that is modern high school.
I questioned how everything was going to get done, doubting whether she could avert the threat of regret and failure. Maybe not, but it’s possible I was this paranoid when she was in kindergarten or third grade, when she was 6 or 8 or 12, and perhaps I was. Good grief, I think I was.
She sat there and let the storm subside, let my every qualm and warning wash over her and then she said a few words.
I think it will be OK, mom.
Sometimes I regret having written so much about parenthood for these many years, to have implied that I knew anything about doing it differently. The process has revealed itself as one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, ten steps back, one step forward, ten billion steps back, back, back, until it’s just you with your lonely fear and worry ’til the day you die. My first Zen teacher Maezumi Roshi said that worry was a mother’s occupation, and that occupation isn’t the kind that pays. It doesn’t bear fruit or fulfillment; no, it’s an occupation that consumes you day and night until you are just a stalking, zombie husk of a mother that scatters every living thing within her doomed reach to seek the wide shelter of an opposite shore.
Those few words of hers, so simple, comforting and kind, sounded like what I might have said once, and should say, and will say, and hope to say in some future moment of selfless grace and faith, when I get the chance, if I get the chance, to be her mother again, when it will all most definitely be OK.
Here’s the history: it all started with Google. Then Google bought Blogger, then YouTube, then Feedburner, then bought and sold two dozen other things. Then I opened a Gmail account. I had so many Google usernames and passwords that every time I tried to go anywhere to do anything I was asked if I didn’t want to combine, or reallocate, or add this, or try again or restart or use Google+, all your friends are using Google+, and in a moment of fury and confusion I stupidly responded The only thing I want right now is Google Minus and I deleted what I thought was a useless account. Then one day last week I clicked on a link and found that I no longer had a blog feed, no longer had any blog subscribers and anyone who is reading this right now doesn’t even exist, and then I realized the terrible thing I had done, the awful irreversible crime which is to second guess Google.
Georgia turned 14 today. When she woke up and got dressed, I called her over to my desk.
She wants balloons at the pool party, and I think a cloud of purple balloons would be just right. There is no such thing as too young or fun in these last days before turning fourteen.
