Tag Archives: birthday

19

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Another birthday. And so two characters exit the stage, Fifteen and Eighteen, and two enter, Sixteen and Nineteen.

I’m at a stage in life, most likely late-middle, where I don’t take mine or other close friends’ or family members’ birthdays for granted. Increasingly I think of birthdays as celebrations of another year of life together.

After writing warm fuzzy posts about the GalPal and youngest daught, there’s real pressure to deliver more warm fuzzies this time around.

I know I should write about how Nineteen is also blossoming on her own at college. About how helpful she’s been at home this summer. About how she salvaged a summer of unemployment by hustling together odd jobs in the hood and a half-time internship. About how nice it was that she invited me to go to Portland with her for a Sara Bareilles concert (that fact that her mom didn’t want her driving home alone after midnight might have factored in too).

Can’t though because a part of Nineteen’s blossoming is continuing to get faster in the pool. When she got faster than me at the 500 freestyle, I consoled myself by thinking at least I own the shorter stuff. Since that’s no longer true, I figured well I can still sing “Look at Me Now” to myself as I pull away in open water. Then Mel, her, and I dove into Ward Lake last Saturday afternoon. I used to be able to pick her out when looking back while breathing. Now I have to lift the chin and tilt the ol’ noggin forward.

So since this is what it has come to, her showing no respect for her elders, I’m going to tap that middle schooler in me that does the opposite of whatever I’m supposed to. Stopping right here sans warm fuzzies.

And as Sara sings. . . Who cares if you disagree? You are not me. Who made you king of anything?

16

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Happy b-day to my favorite tall, slender, pale, whispy blonde high school fashionista. A sporadic reader of the blog, right now she’s completely unplugged at church camp near the Canadian border. That means I can call her “pale” and write whatever I want.

I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. Right before she ceremonially set her phone on the kitchen counter and departed for camp I naively asked, “What are you going to miss more, your cell phone or me?” Hope she doesn’t mind if I assume her on-line identity and jump right in to her friends’ texting torrent. Maybe I should update her Facebook page for her.

I’ve always been skeptical of conventional wisdom about teens. Yes, there’s her post-Katrina bedroom, shrugs and grunts over breakfast, and occasional attitude, but the big-picture parenting challenge is to remember that’s superficial stuff.

Scratch below the surface and ask her about her faith, the death penalty, her surviving middle school, her desire to live in another country by herself after college, the five (soon to be six) kids she regularly babysits, or her desire to someday have her own medium-large family.

She’s blossoming into an increasingly competent, thoughtful young woman with nice friends with whom she can be her quirky self. For instance, how many Sixteens rank their friends’ driving? To move up the list she advises, “Don’t be oblivious or careless.” Words to live by.

When it comes to 16, I’m proud of a lot of things including her work with young children and her remembering, when it comes to peer relations, what it feels like to be on the outside looking in.

Watching her blossom is a great joy.