Fourteen

I woke up suddenly and early, very early for a Saturday and the thought that shook my mind awake was: The Beast will be 14 next year!

I was 14 when I had my first boyfriend. And even though I was a late bloomer—I am praying that The Beast will be an even later bloomer.

Actually I still am a late bloomer…slow to get a boyfriend, reluctant to finish college, vague in my career, unhurried to get married, late having a child, but suddenly everything is going fast. I hear that as we get older we do the same things over and over again so one day blends into the next and one year melds with the next and thus time seems to go fast when in fact—we are just doing the same things over and over again so our life stretches into one long continuously playing loop—until you are jolted awake by a revelation.

I clearly remember the excitement of 14—which, mind you, had nothing to do with the incredibly self-centered boyfriend I had. It was the year that my friends and I went off on a two week bike trip around Cape Cod, on our own, with no adult supervision. We got lost, we fought, we turned a dark shade of tan, lived in youth hostels, and we had best time ever. Ms. Filmmaker still goes back on occasion to that youth hostel on the dunes of Truro because it was such a beautiful place.

Things are different now—kids seem to grow up more quickly in many ways, but in other ways they live in a bubble of parent/school protection. The thought of sending The Beast off to Cape Cod with just a bicycle, some cash and a few traveler checks would not cross my mind—yet we were able to convince three sets of parents that everything would be just fine. And it was.

I am hoping that The Beast is a late bloomer too. She is too beautiful, too soulful, too thoughtful to rush into the complexities of boyfriends. If she rushes anywhere, I hope it is towards her own adventures and passions with her friends.

Friends

The Husband thinks I obsess…and it is SO true. One of my obsession is friends….The Beast’s friends.

I would not say I have a lot of friends…mainly because of this blog… and my personality in general. But I have TRUE friends. And I think there is nothing more important in life than true friends. Ideally friends who have known you for a long time.

My best friend in the whole wide world is Ms. Filmmaker. She has always been crazy, silly, creative, deep and endlessly interesting to me. I met Ms. Filmmaker when we were both on our way to our first day of kindergarten. We chatted a mile a minute and giggled then and we do the very same thing today.

When the Beast started Public School I was frightened…very frightened. As I may have mentioned before—we were zoned to the one elementary school that was NOT artsy-farty… Many of the mothers looked like aging Barbies and the kindergarten class looked like a box full of Kelly dolls.

Taking a deep breath, I dropped my Asian/Hispanic looking child in to the mix. She loved the Kellies. She loved the long ,blond hair, the pink clothes, the blue eyes of the Kelly doll students, but sometimes they were friends and sometimes not. This was not the warm fuzzy German Pre-school where everyone played nice. This was not the “movement class” where all the kids dressed kooky.

We were now in the land of the pink Hello Kitty outfits and the light-up sneakers. The Beast’s red Blundie boots, the wildly striped winter tights and the Basque beret were a dead giveaway that we did not live in the development down the street. My vintage Saab, my basically all black wardrobe and distinct lack of make-up set us apart from day one.

I did not have the time nor inclination to start expanding my wardrobe color palette since I worked “Outside the Home” and the child had no intentions of giving up her beloved Blundies. But this turned out to be a good thing, because being yourself (as my mother always told me) is in the only way to find true friends. Plus we were too lazy to work on actually fitting in.

The Beast navigated quietly through a social network of queen bee girls (which we called the “pill girls” because they were really quite unpleasant) and found the interesting girls. We tried Daisy’s and we BOTH discovered one true friend each and then through love of art the Beast found another good friend.

The Beast is now in Middle School and the friend issue still lingers heavy on my mind not because she is lacking friends, but because I believe it is your friends more than your parents who truly help you navigate and succeed in the world. They are your mirror. We have been lucky—The Beast is still close to girls she met when she was three and her new friends all are interesting and nice. Once she entered the Middle School, where all the schools come together, the artys-fartys types now outnumber the more socially conservative groups and dressing kooky and doing interesting stuff is prized.

The beast still sees some of the queen bee girls from her old school and there is even a joke among her friends about one girl who was notorious for befriending girls and then dropping them. The joke is that all the “dropped” friends are forming a club called: “The Former Friends of XXXXX XXXXXX” since there are so many of them.

If you can’t join them—at least make fun of them.