When I wake up in the morning, I will be the mother of a teenager.
Now let’s take two seconds and try to be reasonable about this……
First of all, I don’t know how I can be the mother of a 13 year old when I’m only 25. Right? Anyone else with me? The math just does not add up there in my favor. Actually I think the math what might have been the clue that led one of my kids to the truth.
Second, I feel too young to be the mom of a 13 year old but that ol’ mirror is a liar and tries to tell me differently. I used to look at it and see smooth skin with gravity that was in my favor. Now the stinkin’ mirror thinks it’s OK to show me this person with fine wrinkles all around her eyes like raisins and gray hair! Gray! A lot! I had to buy brightening cream to hide the bags under the eyes in the mirror and THEN also a color corrector because one just wasn’t enough.
Honestly I don’t feel like being reasonable because one day someone hands you this pink screaming baby and says, “here raise it”, and you panic thinking you will seriously mess it all up before they’re even a week old.
Then…. Then… let’s not even talk about how you childproof your house so well that no one can open a single drawer because you want to protect them in that very moment where they don’t realize that knives are sharp.
And potty training? Might as well just throw in the towel for parenting right there. If you do happen to make it through it without cleaning up brown smears off of walls and other surfaces then you go through the “dressing themselves phase.” Oh brother.
When the dressing themselves phase seems to finally be winding down and the leopard print skirt with black feather boa edging is finally safely hidden in the Goodwill pile, then you have the “brushing their own hair” phase which leads to a lot of fights and not so great pictures.
During each of these phases as a parent, you only concentrate on that time and hope that you’ll just make it another day.. maybe a week… maybe to Kindergarten.
And then one day you sit in front of your laptop after getting home from watching this little baby throw discus at a track meet and you wonder why they let little pink babies throw discuses. Isn’t that dangerous?
Just kidding. You think about the conversation that you had that night with this girl who is just as tall as you and all the sudden is talking about life rather than toys.
The biggest shift is that you and your spouse no longer talk about how to protect them from the little things that might hurt them but instead you give them the tools to help them conquer those things and the rest of life.
13.
3 years until driving (Lord help us all), 5 years until college, 0.0 seconds until Mama has a breakdown.
Happy Birthday to the one who gave the mirror a reason to lie to me. I can’t believe you’re 13.
