Stuck in the Middle

In the "olden days" as we used to say when I was a kid, I would be far beyond the middle of my life. Forty or even twenty years ago, not that many people lived into their 90s. So, at 51, my expiration date would be fast approaching. At best I might have 25 or 30 years left. And I think about that all the time now, as I struggle with the changes that menopause throws me, much as my children both struggle with puberty. I think: if Annie doesn't get married until she's 30, like I did, and she doesn't have a baby until she's 35, then I will be a grandmother at 73.

That's not so old, right? I come from hearty German stock on both sides. My paternal grandparents died within a year of one another, my grandmother still so in love with my grandfather that she literally wasted away from grief after he was felled by heart disease; they were both in their early 90s. And my mother's mother outlived my mom who died at 71 from emphysema brought about by years and years of smoking. Grandmother died at 96, sharp, as they say, as a tack, at the end. So, by all rights if I'm a grandma at 73, I might get to see that grandchild graduate from high school at least, if not college.

If I'm going to live into my 90s, then 51 is more than halfway through, but not by much. And most of the time I don't feel "middle aged." I work and work out and take care of my family, and laugh with my husband, and yeah, I forget why I went to the garage and come back up with Kleenex when I meant to get a can of nuts, but it doesn't matter much. It's when I look in the mirror at this nice older lady with boobs down to their and a big, puffy tummy despite my daily sweat that I realize that yes, I am too middle aged, maybe even pushing the edge of old, chronologically at least, and you know what? Since I don't consider plastic surgery an option, and I'm too much of a pleasure hog to forgo wine and brownies forever, there's not a whole hell of a lot I can do. So, I'm working on acceptance. I think it's a valid lesson for anyone to learn. I tell my kids that when they complain about their hair or their inability to do a headstand or why they aren't taller. We are who we are, and we all have to love ourselves, at least some of the time.

My Son, the Football Player

The thing I dreaded, prayed wouldn't happen, tried to deny its reality, is here.

My 15-year-old son, the high school freshman, is playing football. Actually, he hasn't played yet, but he has been to practice every day save one since school started last week, and today, Labor Day, while the rest of his classmates are hanging out and chilling, Matt is spending five (!) hours at the practice field because today not only will he run and do drills and sweat like a pig, but he will get his practice pads and jersey. Let the games begin.

I guess you may have figured out I'm not the biggest football fan. In truth, I'd be hard put to say I really liked any sport Well, maybe the girly ones like ice skating and gymnastics. But since I've had a son I've been to t-ball, baseball, soccer, basketball, and lacrosse games over the past ten years, and I've learned if not to exactly enjoy but endure. And I find watching both basketball and lacrosse, probably because they're fast, to be quite exhilarating. Not that I really understand anything about staying too long in the key or offsides or anything else technical about the games, but watching Matt run down a court or up a field with possession of the ball, cheering gleefully when he scores, watching his self confidence soar, now that I can get excited about. I've stood on the sidelines of chilled, foggy fields early on Saturday mornings and rested my butt on hard-as-rock bleachers in remote, stinky gyms on weeknights to watch my boy play, and I wouldn't have missed a minute.

But football. In high school I pretty much avoided going to football games as not only was I a nerd, but I was a theater nerd, and my various chorus, dance, and musical rehearsals seemed to coincide with the games so I was spared. My father watched the occasional game on TV, but I could tell it was more background noise than something he cared about. My parents were baseball fans, but not me. I stayed within my arty boundaries and let others be the cheerleaders.

In college, football games were the big social events on the weekends, and I took them for what they were. The tailgate parties beforehand were spectacular, and if I spent the game watching the crowd not the field, scoping out the boys, well, who knew? Downs and rushes, linebackers versus fullbacks—it was all Greek to me. I knew enough to cheer when our team made a touchdown, and the band played the winning song (at Stanford it was and is "All Right Now"), and I had a great time. Beer helped.

Then I married a jock who played high school and college football, and football was on the television or the radio all fall until Super Bowl parties where I hung out in the kitchen and chatted with the other wives. But now I will have to actually go to football games. I will have to listen to my husband and my son endlessly dissect plays and players afterwards, and I will pray that my poor boy (my muscled, stocky football guy) doesn't get trampled or broken or concussed or worse.

It's only freshman football. Maybe he won't go out for JV next year. Or maybe he'll love it, and by then, maybe I'll understand the game. Here's hoping.

Seasonal Gloom

The summer is waning, although here in San Francisco it's hard to tell. August is always the foggiest month, and this year seems worse than ever. Especially as we live near the ocean--we can walk to the beach, although we rarely do--the days are swathed in damp white whirls of moisture that pushes into houses and cars and people and dogs by a biting wind.

The other day I realized that this was the first summer of my life that I stayed in the state where I live for the entire summer. Now, I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure that even as a baby my parents swaddled me up and whisked me off from our home in upstate New York to visit my grandparents in Berkeley and Los Angeles. And later there are pictures of me grinning toothlessly from a portable crib under an umbrella on the beach on Cape Cod. Then there are the summer-after-summer memories of that drive, my sister and me rolling freely on the bench seat of the station wagon, knowing we were getting closer when we saw sand on the edges of the road. Later on, when I was in high school, we started going to Nantucket from our new home outside Baltimore, adding miles and a ferry trip to the journey. But I never minded because Nantucket was nirvana, with its adorable shops, delectable ice cream shops and restaurants, and best of all, the freedom to walk downtown at night to meet boys.

But this year, our family elected to spend one week together in the Sierras, four hours away, and then Matt and his dad went backpacking in the high country in an even more remote spot. I whipped down to Orange County for a day-and-a-half with my best, dearest and still closest friend from college, Wendy, and 13-year-old Annie and I had a two-day respite in Napa while the boys were gone. All of these mini-trips were fun, but here it is, still more than a week until September, and I've had it with summer. Every day that dawns foggy, I feel grumpy, relishing the warmth of the yoga studio and wishing for the sun. I've looked into going back to Napa, but since we spent most of our "staycation" redoing our living room, having the windows washed, and other expensive house projects, there's no way we can afford a resort. I've given serious thought to begging my acquaintance with the second home in St. Helen to let us camp out in her pool house (I'm not too picky at this point), but my pride would suffer. I've hinted to Annie that if she gets invited to stay with her friend in Napa, I'd be happy to drive up and spend the day, but instead the friend's mother wanted us to keep her daughter with us in the city. Talk about plans backfiring.

So here I am, gazing out my office window at the gray sky and the green leaves quivering in the breeze, the tan on my forearms fading more each day, waiting for sunny September which always happens, forcing the kids back to school to sweat in their uniform blazers, allowing me to sit on the back deck off the bedroom resurrecting that unhealthy tan for just a few more weeks, eating the last of the heirloom tomatoes and nectarines, and buying boots and cashmere sweaters that I won't be able to wear until November, by which I will surely be ready for fall.

One Here, One There: The Summer of Coming and Going

Summer is half over, and its been a weird one so far. My two teenagers were around for the first couple of weeks after school let out, lounging languidly on the couch, fighting over the remote; the rest of time plugged into their cell phones, iPods, or computers, texting and IMing until I forced them off to sports camp in the afternoons. Then, three weeks ago, we left for a week at a family camp in the Sierras.

The camp is couched amongst pine and oak trees surrounded by flowering meadows, immense mountains, rivers with waterfalls to play in; nature truly at its finest, with sunny warm days and gently chilled nights. Once there, you settle into your rustic cabin with its creaky beds and ancient wooden dressers and commence to do a whole lot of nothing. There is a lake, an unheated pool, tennis courts, a basketball court, ping-pong tables, a horseshoe pit, a playground for the little ones, and loosely scheduled activities such as tie-dye, lanyards, nature hikes, and star gazing. Meals are served cafeteria-style in the huge, old dining hall with its spacious deck, and the food is a plentiful, calorie-laden joy. Where else are you going to eat pancakes and bacon for breakfast, grilled cheese or Thai chicken wraps and onion rings for lunch, and lasagna, veggies, garlic bread and homemade chocolate cake for dinner? Without grocery shopping, cooking or washing dishes for seven days. Heaven on many levels. Everyone brings plenty of wine, beer, or their beverage of choice, and no one has to be the designated driver. We read, swim, bike, and hike to burn off those immense meals. I think it's the only place where I pretty much forgo makeup.

One of the best things about family camp is that if your kids are old enough, like ours, they pretty much have free reign. They eat their meals with other kids, ride around in packs on their mountain bike, and play games in the lake and out with their new and old friends. The family sleeps together in the cabin, and I've been known to chase my son around with a bottle of SPF 45, but unless they get sick, hurt or need money to buy milkshakes and candy at the camp store, you see them in passing. And for city kids such as my two, heaven again.

This year my son, Matt, got invited to stay for a second week with his best friend from middle school and his family who happened to be coming up to the mountains on the day we checked out. He did this last year, and we figured it would be especially nice this time, as he and Connor will go off to different, rival high schools in August. And I relished having a week at home with just my daughter, Annie. We did "girl" things like shop, get pedicures, and watch "So You Think You Can Dance" with bated breath. I made her favorite dishes, and she roughhoused with her dad at night, something I don't think will happen much longer now that she's 13. I missed Matt but he called once to let us know he was having a great time, so the week went by.

Then, last Saturday, he called to say that Connor's family had managed to get a cabin for a second week and could he stay? He was signed up for more sports camp and Spanish tutoring, but it's the summer between 8th grade and high school, and you're only 15 once, so of course we said yes. And Annie and I continued our little routines, this time focusing on getting her ready to depart for two weeks of her own overnight camp in the mountains.

Matt got home an hour ago, taller I swear, with feet so dirty it will take a week of showers just to de-grime them and a duffle full of filthy laundry. He is reunited with his laptop, sprawled across his bed as his sister packs her own duffle in the next room for the bus that leaves at 9:00 tomorrow morning. We will have the first family dinner we've had in three weeks tonight (pizza so I won't piss anyone off--the pasta queen or the carnivore), and then she'll leave, and I'll be back to one child for two more weeks. The day Annie's bus arrives back, Matt and my husband leave for a weeklong backpacking trip, so it'll be girl time again. The four of us won't have another family dinner for another three weeks.

I'm not complaining. I actually think all this one-on-one with the kids is good for my relationship with them, and it obviously cuts down on the remote-control wars (and the shower wars and the "I don't want to watch that!" wars). But it's weird in the mornings to set out one juice glass, one cereal bowl, one vitamin. My housekeeper will clean the missing child's room, and then it will stay oddly pristine. Matt's own personal funky smell of unwashed socks and less-than-clean hair stayed for about a week, and then the room was kind of like a hotel room, tidy but impersonal. The scent of Annie's fruity conditioner will linger only so long in her room, and then it will feel the same way when I walk in: like a ghost town.

I guess this is getting me ready for when Matt goes off to college in four years, and we're down to just Annie until she too flees the nest. It doesn't feel bad. Just very, very different.

Where There's Smoke

When I wake up at dawn the sun is red. The skies are filled with white and gray, almost like the fog we normally see here in Northern California in the summertime. Maybe there is a little fog out there, but when I step out to pick up the papers from the sidewalk, I smell it. You can't smell fog. But the smoke that has drifted over the city, over the entire state for the past five days is evident the minute I take a breath.

The first day it made me nostalgic. The morning air smelled like a beach bonfire, a campfire on its way out, even the embers of a fire crackling in the fireplace. But the novelty wore off quickly as the radio and television news reporters listed all the wildfires burning in different parts of the state, many only partially contained, with new fires starting every day. When the reporters talked about unhealthy air and particulates that can lodge deep within your lungs. We've got draught conditions already this summer, and even though it's only June, the woods and the valleys and the mountains are parched and crispy, ready to go at a hint of heat lightening; humidity hardly exists.

"Smell the smoke?" I ask my sleepy teenagers already set to their new, no-school schedule as they wander toward breakfast. "See the haze," I say as I pour the orange juice. "It's not fog, it's smoke from all the fires burning!" They don't answer, they aren't listening. They aren't old enough yet to feel the guilt I feel about having inflicted so much trash, so much rubbish on the earth. Climate change and global warming, these are things they've learned about in school, and so they dutifully recycle their water bottles and compost their food scraps. But they don't take ownership of the scary, dirty place the world's become. And why should they? For all intents and purposes we're raising our kids right so they will take responsibility for their own garbage, so they will grow up to be ecologically responsible adults.

Each day when another red sun greets me, and the smokey haze obliterates the sunshine, I wonder though. I hope it's not too late.

Graduation Blues

Today my 15-year-old son graduated from middle school. Actually in the parlance of private, Catholic schools, he graduated from elementary school because he started there in kindergarten nine years ago and just finished up 8th grade. In August, he will start high school.

Right now, at almost 8:00 p.m., I am supposed to be at a graduation party. But I have pleaded exhaustion and a stomach ache, both true, but usually not enough to keep me down. But here I am at the computer keeping company with one of my two cats, and I am still working to process what has happened.

I have a son who's in high school. I have a son who stares me down, who fights with me over personal hygiene, over personal space, who tells me how to drive my car ("Mom, go!" when I dally at a changing light). I have a son who isn't even coming home after the party but spending the night at a friend's, then flying down to Santa Monica with three other friends and a dad, to spend a wild weekend seeing the sights at Venice beach. This boy of mine who's just barely 15. Who, the other night had to show me the three long and curly hairs he's grown under his arms as if to prove to me that he is really growing up. As if I didn't know.

I didn't cry at the graduation ceremony. I was ready to, when I thought Matt would win a prize. I thought he would win for best writer, for he is a marvel, or for sportsmanship as he is an awesome athlete. But he didn't win anything. He simply marched across the stage when his name was called, his face burnt and sunburned from the school's field day--a full day of sports at a local soccer field--when he forgot or just resisted putting on the sunscreen I had begged him to before he left. He kept his head down in the light of his father's and grandparents' digital cameras glinting, hiding a smile as he shook hands with the headmaster with whom he'd never seen exactly eye to eye.

I didn't even cry at the obligatory Mass the school held last week where they showed a video of the boys (it's an all-boys Catholic school) from way back in kindergarten where they were still wearing short pants and knee socks to the hulking adolescents that they are today, complete with nostalgic music. No, tears were far from my mind. All I have been thinking for the last two weeks is: I remember 15. I remember the equal parts desire, love, anger, hatred, joy, fear, and triumph I felt every day for a million reasons and how confusing it all was. I remember wanting to be in love, wanting to be the best; I remember thinking that no one had ever or would ever understand me because I was so freaking different from everyone else in the entire world. And here alone, I want to say to Matt, hey, bud, I understand. And it just keeps getting more confusing every day. But never ever forget that even when I'm screaming my head off over a towel on the floor or a lost retainer, I love you so much my heart will burst.

Congratulations, graduate!

Family Vacations: An Oxymoron

Family vacation. The very mention sends me into a funk. Not that I don't look forward to vacations. I love to travel, to stay in new places, to eat in different restaurants and cafes, to prowl unfamiliar streets, to poke around in shops. But somehow, maybe because the stakes are too high, because all of us have different expectations, and because my two children seem to revel in the familiar comforts of home and their own beds, every time the four of us go on a vacation it's a semi-disaster!

My husband, Ted, would choose backpacking and hiking in the mountains every time if he could. Nothing better to him than getting dirty out in nature, pushing himself harder each day, sleeping in a tent, and washing his face with cold stream water. But after enough family hikes where the rest of us began whining after the first big hill and threatened never to accompany him again, he's learned that a simple day hike broken up with a gourmet picnic is our idea of a good time.

My daughter, Annie, 13, hates to fly, so she'd opt for something close to home. With a friend along. Actually she might go anywhere with a friend, but preferably someplace with a pool and henna tattoos and pizza. No fancy restaurants, no swimming in the scary ocean, no oh-so-boring museums. Fifteen-year-old Matt would also like to be with a buddy, but he would like to be on his own with his friend, checking out the girls and drinking lots of soda and eating his fill of burgers, burritos, and submarine sandwiches with a chaser of Skittles, unlimited email access and video games. Sure, he'd fit in a little boogie boarding and body surfing but lounging in front of a TV in a luxury hotel room suits him just fine.

And me? I like an urban setting, the same luxury hotel with a gym and a spa, fabulous shopping, great dining options and my husband all to myself. And on our family vacations none of us really get what we want. Someone is always complaining about the food or the long drive or the tiring terrain or the crummy food or the crappy room or the heat or the rain or their mere existence on earth. Yet, we keep forging ahead, planning to meet Ted in New York for Memorial Day weekend. I'll let you know how it goes.

Confessions of a Control Freak

I recall when my kids were toddlers I was in a big hurry for them to grow up already! Learn to tie your own shoelaces, wipe your bottom and your nose; grow tall enough to reach for a glass in the cupboard and get your own drink of water.

Now that they're teens, I wish Matt and Annie would just slow down a little. It's a funny thing. As your kids become more and more independent and self sufficient, you think you can do less, let down your guard. And maybe that's true--obviously they can make their own snacks and figure out their own rides and social lives. Matt now routinely takes the bus home when I'm going to be late picking him up, and Annie just spent 10 days in Rome on a school trip and didn't even bother to call or email once.

But. What about all the other things in the world that confront our children as teenagers that they just might not be able to handle? Two nights ago Matt asked: what if he did something "bad" right now would it mean he wouldn't get into the private high school that's already accepted him? "What did you do?" his father and I collectively asked. "Nothing," he replied. "It's a hypothetical question."

"Well, that depends on whether it was illegal or if someone got hurt," I told him. "That would be a problem."

It took until the next morning for him to fess up. A high school freshman Matt has known since last year in middle school--they played lacrosse together--had contacted Matt online to find out whether Matt or any of his friends wanted to buy some "weed." Matt, always wanting to be liked, replied that he wasn't sure but he would get back to the boy. Then, knowing he was wrong, he text-messaged the kid and said he wasn't interested. But he was worried that because of his initial, semi-positive response that he would somehow get found out by his current school, expelled and then not allowed into high school. Now, I know this is a lot of magical, catastrophic thinking because I engage in it myself, and Matt is mostly a male, more athletic version of me as a teenager. But both Ted and I had to talk him down and explain that he hadn't done anything wrong, that the other kid was engaging in illegal activity, and that Matt should simply avoid further contact.

Ha! Easier said than done when all the kids are connected via the Internet and their cell phones. If kids are trying to sell pot to Matt in 8th grade, won't there be even more of that in high school? Not to mention other, more dangerous drugs and alcohol? I already know the answer to that. What I don't know is how my son, a bright kid who likes to be popular and enjoys taking risks, will hold up under all that peer pressure. We've certainly talked about it a lot, and we'll probably talk it to death over the summer. But, as they say, talk is cheap, and what Matt decide to do on his own is no longer under my control. I can't stop him from buying chips and soda on the way home from school when he takes the bus, I can't make him study harder for tests, and I can't stop him from using his own money to buy drugs if that's something he wants to do.

It makes me miss those good old days when I was really, truly in charge, and every morsel that went into my children's mouths, every TV show they watched, every birthday party they attended had the parental stamp of approval. I'm sure my parents felt the same way when I started high school, started dating, started driving. But I have to say, I don't like it one bit!

Time for the Talk. Period.

It's official. My 12-year-old is now thirteen, and I am actually the parent of two teenagers. Sure, Annie's been acting like a teen all year, but now she's really there, and if to highlight her new status, she's gone through an incredible growth spurt so that none of last year's shorts and sandals or even the tennis shoes I bought her in January fit. Between birthday gifts, trips to the mall with friends—her favorite pastime—and quick trips to the sporting goods store, we've managed to fill in the gaps in her wardrobe. But every night when she comes into my bedroom for her goodnight kiss--a tradition that may be on its wane--I see her pointy new little breasts underneath the big t-shirt she sleeps in, and I think, OMG, she's really not my little girl anymore.

Well, of course she is, because I don't have any other girls so Annie will always been my youngest, my baby girl. But in the car on the way to the grocery store (my stuff) and the office supply store (her stuff) I said, "So, Annie since your brother isn't in the car, and you're 13 now, I've been thinking that you should be ready, you know, in case you get your period. Because there is nothing worse than being unprepared, and you probably won't have any warning the first time."

In the passenger seat next to me, my daughter grimaced and nodded simultaneously. "Yeah," she said. "Like that time that Rowan got hers at the championship basketball game. There was blood on the chair. It was so gross!"

"Well," I said, having been through such grotesqueness at a much older age and not in public, but, well, the seat of the car was pretty nasty, "It's hard to find a place to put a pad or a tampon in your basketball uniform. I'm going to give you a couple of mini-pads that are completely wrapped up, and you should keep them in your backpack and take them on sleep overs so that doesn't happen." Again, she nodded her assent and changed the subject.

Later, after she came home from a confirmation party I asked her if the boy she liked had been there. "Was he nice?" I asked dumbly. "You're so weird, Mom," said Annie. "Can I have those things we were talking about in the car?"

Thirteen. So in between, so young and so sophisticated. So hard for me to get used to even though I clearly saw it coming.

IM = Instant gratification for Me!

Okay, so I'm addicted to the Internet. I mean, really, who isn't? The first thing I do when I come home, and since I work at home, that tends to be many times a day, is check my email. I read the news online, check the weather, browse, shop, make dinner reservations, and, of course, communicate with friends, family, colleagues, prospective employers, and naturally, my two teenagers.

The difference is: I communicate via email. Good old message sent, waiting for a reply, but not expecting one instantaneously. And that just makes me, well, old.

My kids rarely check their email boxes. They are far too busy instant messaging their friends through AIM, the most ubiquitous means of IM, or through their accounts at Facebook. Now, don't get all preachy on me, I know my not-even-quite 13-year-old isn't old enough to have a Facebook page, but I've checked it out, and since most of her friends, and all of her 15-year-old brother's friends are on Facebook, it's a battle I've chosen not to fight. And when they're not IMing, my kids are texting their friends on their cell phones, thumbs flying at the speed of light! When I text I have to stand still, not breathing for lack of concentration while I painstakingly type out a three-line message. And I'm only just becoming hip to the lingo (is "K" really that much faster than OK?)

So, what's my beef with instant messaging? It's the instant part. Again, showing my advanced years, I don't think it's all bad to have to wait for a reply when you send someone a message. If you leave a voicemail message for someone, they'll call you back, eventually. Same with regular email. Even a snail-mail letter will elicit a response unless it's a birthday card or a bill. There's something nice about that time of anticipation, looking forward to checking the mail, voicemail, email. Instant messaging allows teenagers to spend literally hours going back and forth, often in groups, about what he said and she wore and how bored am I, and now I'm logging off, or now I'm going to "poke" you, and look, I just did!

To me, IMing is a giant time sucker that stands in the way of homework getting down or a nice game of ball at the park or a real live conversation with someone in your house. And texting follows, especially when you're texting under the dinner table at a restaurant which me thinks Miss Manners would ban as do I.

This is just a little rant--things just keep getting faster out there in the world of technology, and our kids are the target market. And I'm just one step away from buying an iPhone so I can check my email in the car while I wait for my kids to finish practice or what have you. But I'll still look forward to opening the mail.

Falling from Grace

My daughter used to be a star. She used to have an unusual and fascinating talent that brought her, and her father and me, much joy.

My daughter used to be a contortionist. Yes, a real, ultra-bendable, flexible girl just like the ones in Cirque du Soleil, who can slide into a split or a straddle like silk, who can turn themselves into a human pretzel, looking at the world with their heads backwards and between their legs (literally called "pretzel" in the circus world.

Annie started summer circus camp when she was about eight, and after the second summer of tumbling and trampoline and clowning, but most of all contortion, she made the switch from gymnastics, where her natural flexibility had come in handy, to joining a youth circus. In San Francisco, we are lucky enough to have two circus schools right here in the city.

At ten, Annie was the circus's youngest member. And for two years we watched her learn to move in amazing, almost painful but beautiful ways. She was part of an ensemble; she was a performer, so she absorbed tech rehearsals and stage make up, and costume changes, and stage fright. The other kids were mostly teenagers, each with a specialty; there were just two other contortionists. Annie hung out with hand balancers, trapeze artists, acrobats, clowns, and jugglers; more than circus skills she gained confidence in herself. She was proud of her abilities. She performed in two shows a year, plus various "gigs." When she started a new grade at school or met someone and they asked her anything at all about herself, Anne would tell them she was a contortionist. She performed without fear at family gatherings and in front of her awed teachers and classmates at school.

But something changed when she entered 7th grade last fall. For one thing, her beloved coach and circus director had left in the spring, and Annie and the other kids had never taken to her replacement, a talented musician but with experience in circus or with kids. And a bigger change--Annie started puberty. Between the changes taking place in her body, and the desire to be popular and cool, being a contortionist was suddenly not so cool. It was, as her older brother had been telling her for years, just plain weird. When all of Annie' friends started going to volleyball practice after school, she felt left out. Plus her schoolwork increased, and so she convinced us to let her quit circus and go out for volleyball, for which she had unfortunately missed the deadline. I enrolled her in a yoga class with two friends, anxious not to let that incredible flexibility go. She sailed through yoga, and then it was time for basketball tryouts, and she made the JV team, along with about ten of her very best friends. Life became about after-school practices and a uniform with the school logo on it, and games in sweaty, smelly gyms.

And this is the thing: my petite and beautiful contortionist is a crummy basketball player. I mean, she sucks. She's great at the practices as all of that conditioning from the circus has made her strong. She has great drive and stamina; she wants to please her coaches. But she is afraid of the ball, she doesn't know how to shoot, and she frequently passes the ball to the other team.

At first, I kept asking her if she missed circus, her friends, there, performing, anything at all, and she resolutely said, no. Finally, she asked me to stop bugging her about it, and so I did. And I sit through positively painful games where she struggles and misses, and other taller, faster girls race past her, and it's such a different experience from watching that confident, amazingly graceful girl up on stage glide from pose into pose. I want to cry every time I think about it. But despite her fumbles on the court, Annie is a happy girl. She's one of the most popular kids in her grade, and the coaches love her spirit, and there's a lot of togetherness among the team. So, I've had to let go. Maybe she'll go back to circus, and maybe she won't. She won't make the high school basketball team, that I know. But maybe there's something else out there that she'll excel at, and she just hasn't figured it out yet. Still, it's been a rough year for me, falling from grace.

The Teens, They are a 'Changing

My son, Matt, is barely 15 and almost out of 8th grade.  Yet already he has a burgeoning social life, complete with coed get-togethers, lunches on the town with the guys, and thankfully, hours of pick-up ball at the playground.  I'm thrilled by his new-found independence, yet burdened by the thankless picking up and dropping off it involves for my husband and me.  Worse yet, I am worried about the amount of time Matt and his friends seem to spend "hanging out."  I'm nosy.  I want to know what these just-sprouted teenagers are doing for hours on the weekend afternoons and evenings.  A la Carrie Bradshaw: "What does hanging out really mean?"

When I was 15, my two best friends and I spent every evening of the summer between 8th and 9th grade riding our bikes to the middle school tennis courts after dinner.  Sure, we played some tennis although we were all pathetic, non-athletes who could barely hit the ball.  But the attraction were the boys playing basketball on the court just next door.  These shirtless, sweaty hunks of testosterone, jumping and dunking, swearing and spitting, had all our attention.  I had a crush on Tim, who was blond and surfer-ish, who had sat near me in classes all school year, and who surely didn't know my name.  Yet I believed myself in love, and after an evening of tennis and ogling, would rush home and write lavish poems of yearning in my flowered, spiral-bound journal.  Never once did we speak.

Last Saturday night, after hanging with his buds in the afternoon, Matt and two of his guy friends wound up at another 8th grade girl's house who was having a friend sleep over.  When he called to ask if it was okay if he went to this girl's house (yes, I am eternally thankful that he calls--most of the time), I asked him if her parents would be home.  There was a moment of hesitation.  "They're going to a movie," Matt said.  "But Mom, it's just down the street!"

And so I relented, figuring there was safety in numbers, I knew he wasn't interested in either of the girls romantically, and that we had already established a pick-up time of 9:30 as Matt had to get up early the next day for lacrosse practice.

I don't usually do the evening shift; my husband has an easier time staying up, but he was out, and so I found myself in the car at 9:15 on a freezing March night, headed to a girl's house whose parents I knew socially but not really, wondering all the while what the kids were up to there.  When I arrived, the house, which is large and fancy and takes up the whole block, was mostly dark.  Matt had just broken his cell phone, so I could not call to let him know I had arrived.  I struggled out of the car and up the steps to the house, located the doorbell in the dark and pressed.  Hard.  I waited.  Heard nothing, no bell, no steps on the stairs, no signs the kids were even there.  Shit, I thought.  They've changed locations without telling me, and who knows how I will ever find Matt.  I rang again, longer and harder.  Still no answer although I thought I heard dim girlish shrieking from somewhere in the house.  I started pounding on the solid wood of the door.  It had a high window, and I could look in but saw only a hall and staircase, no obvious signs of life.  I rang and pounded some more, thinking of who I could call, when finally the girl whose parents own the house appeared on the stairs, clad in jeans and a tank top.  "Matt," I mouthed through the window, as she appeared to have no idea who I was, although we have met.  "Matt," she yelled, "your mom's here."  My son appeared from a different part of the house, shoeless and disheveled.  "I have to find my shoes," he said.  "Find Eric, too," I told him.  "His mom asked me to drive him home."  

After much back and forth about shoes and jackets and the location of a third boy, all conducted while I stood on the doorstep of the locked house, the boys came out and tumbled into my car.  "We're taking Connor to Eric's," Matt informed me.  The car filled with a distinct feminine aroma.  "You smell like perfume," I told my son.  "Yeah," he said.  "The girls squirted us with perfume for some reason."  I asked what they'd been doing.  Watching a movie, they told me.  In different parts of the house?  No, Matt said, they were upstairs in Kristen's room.

So we have three 8th-grade boys and two 8th-grade girls upstairs in the girl's bedroom while her parents are out on a Saturday night.  Does anyone else think there's something wrong with this picture?  Or am I a horribly out-of-touch prude who doesn't get today's societal rules for teens having had a relatively stunted social life of my own at 15.  All I can say is I didn't smell pot or alcohol, and the boys have taken an extensive health course this year that covered sexuality, birth control, and sexually transmitted diseases.  So, maybe I am being overly protective; it's sure happened before.

Next year, though, when my daughter, Annie, is in the 8th grade, you can bet she's not having any boys over when I'm out on a Saturday night.  (Or if she does, and I find out about it, there'll be hell to pay.) 

High School Drama

The drama is finally over. Well, until the next drama starts. My son, Matt, who is 14, was just accepted into high school. Now those of you living in the suburbs or other places with perfectly lovely public schools are probably scratching your heads over this. Accepted to high school? You mean he isn't just going to the school that everyone else in his middle school goes to? Do you mean you're sending him away to a fancy-schmancy boarding school because he's some kind of legacy?

No, I am not. The fact is, both my kids have been in private school since kindergarten because we live in a city whose public schools kind of suck. Those schools are big and dirty and while wonderfully ethnically diverse, they aren't known for their stellar academics, at least not in elementary school, so we decided a long time ago to go private, and for the most part, we've been happy. Not with the horrendous tuition or the way that a lot of our kids' classmates seem to live and demand a pricey lifestyle, but by the overall sense of community that the schools provided, along with really good teachers and sports and art and music and all the other things you want for your kids to have at school.

But the price--figuratively--that you pay when your kid is in 8th grade is that you have to apply to the private high schools in the city just as you would to college. And when I say "just" I mean just. Like filling out lengthy applications complete with lists of activities and accomplishments and a personal essay. All of this at the age of 13 or 14. And you have to take at least one, sometimes two entrance exams. Well, they're standardized tests, but the scores count as do your child's report cards and grades from 7th and the first semester of 8th grade. And so does his or her conduct. These private high schools, some of them Catholic and some just independent, are so popular that they routinely get more than twice as many applicants as they can accept. So it makes things just a little bit tense in 8th grade. Like, you have to go visit the schools you want to apply to in the fall (again just like college) and then you have to interview, and all the while keep your grades up, and write the essay and answer the questions, and maybe play sports or an instrument and or go to religious school or maybe try to have a social life on the weekends.

Doesn't that all sound crazy for a 14-year-old teenager with vast hormonal surges and mood swings and the attention span of a housefly?

Well, it is nuts, but everyone here in private school in San Francisco goes through it, and as all the middle school deans and counselors tell you in the fall, all the kids get in somewhere, usually one of the schools they picked, and the story has a happy ending.

So my half-Jewish, half-Episcopalian, non-practicing, agnostic son is going to spend four more years in Catholic school and probably break my heart by going out for football, and I am just doing the happy dance because we like the school, and he likes the school, and I don't have to think about it again until August when his sister has to go through the same thing!

The Ham I Am

Whenever they talk about the "Sandwich Generation," I think of sandwiches. Naturally, as ever since I spent long minutes staring at the weekly food service menu posted on the bulletin board of my freshman dorm at Stanford, food has been a huge factor in my life.

Now, I realize I am in the sandwich, part of it, one with the sandwich, layered in between my two kids and my aging, declining father.  And feeling guilty about all of it, so maybe instead of the ham I am the Kosher salami.  No matter.  

My kids are on the top.  They are like grainy, dense, whole-wheat bread--a little sweet, a bit savory, plenty nutty, and sometimes, a bit hard to digest.  My son is obsessed with You Tube, girls, classic rock, and lacrosse, not necessarily in that order.  My daughter yearns for height, boobs, and straighter hair, lives to read inane teen "chick lit," and wants to spend all her time with her friends, be it in person, online, or on her cell phone.  They are both alternately needy and stand-offish, stubborn, clingy, selfish, and giving.

My father, who just did a face plant while tripping on the flat sidewalk near his house in Washington, DC, has turned into a slice of Wonder Bread.  He is 80 years old and suffers from moderate dementia.  He is witty and charming and unbelievable intelligent, but I can no longer have a cogent conversation with the man.  He prattles weekly on the phone and the weather and all the "things" he needs to do (putter around his house looking for my stepmother and re-reading the New York Times).  He rarely remembers my kids, what I do, or where I am.  When we see him he is all smiles and graciousness until a waiter is late with the wine or one of the kids can't hear him, or he is overtired, and then he is snarly and grumpy, much like a two-year-old.  My stepmother, who is a good deal younger than my father, runs his life and has given up much of hers, including a satisfying career, to take care of him.  Thank goodness.  I couldn't do it.

So that leaves my sister and me, the ham and the cheese, the lox and the onions--ah, the metaphors are marvelous, but what really sucks is that being stuck in the middle like a slim slice of ham just lying there doesn't achieve much.  It is just is.

Remember Dress Shopping with your Mom?

I remember shopping for the dress to wear to my high school boyfriend's senior prom with my mother. She was beautiful and had excellent taste in everything, especially clothes, yet I recall standing in the dress section of the department store in suburban Maryland rejecting everything she thrust toward me, rolling my eyes at her selections, wishing she didn't even have to be there, but because she had the credit card, she did.  Finally we both settled on a black-and-white, polka-dot, long halter dress.  I remember being grateful that she was actually going to let me wear the halter; I had never worn bare shoulders except for a bathing suit.

Last weekend I took my almost 13-year-old shopping for a dress to wear to her school's father-daughter dinner dance.  Yeah, I think it's kind of a weird function for a 7th grader, but hey, this is a private school, and they do love their traditions.  Anyhow, my daughter Annie, who usually adores shopping and knows every corner of the mall by heart, was not pleased about our mission.  "I hate 'froufy' dresses," she said, rolling her eyes.  This I know.  She went through a period from age four to age six where she loved ribbons and ruffles and all things pink, but when it faded, it really faded.  Now she just wants to look cool.  Cool meaning all of her clothes have to come from Hollister or Abercrombie, only worn in layers, and her jeans are so tight they look painted on.  Annie wears a skirt as part of her school uniform, but other than the jumper we bought in the fall to wear to friends' bar and bar mitzvah's, she never wears dresses.

"Why can't I just wear my jumper?" she whined as we entered Bloomingdale's.  "Because," I said, "This is a pretty formal thing, this 'Belles and Beaux,' and I hear some of the dads are wearing tuxes.  And everyone is going to have on a really fancy dress, so that's what we need."

"Some girls are getting their dresses at Betsey Johnson for $200," she countered.

"Why would I buy you a dress for $200 that you're only going to wear once if you hate dresses?" I snapped.  Silence. Copious eye rolling.  Sighing. Glowering big time.

We rummaged through the sale racks in the Bloomingdale's girls department.  "This is cute," I would say, and Annie would shake her head and stamp her Ugg-boot-clad foot impatiently.  She deigned to try on one dress but would not let me see it on her.  "Gross," she was all said.

We labored on to Nordstrom, Wet Seal (yes, surprisingly they have dresses), Forever 21, and even the petite department at Banana Republic where there was one double zero, very chic and simple, elegant black dress that Annie also refused.  Plus her attitude was getting worse, all the dresses were beginning to look the same to me (shiny, heavily adorned with fake jewels and shirring), and we were both hungry.  As we headed to Macy's, our last resort, I told my daughter this: "If we don't find something at Macy's I will go to the store during the week and buy something I like, and you will be forced to wear it, I swear on my life."

Low and behold, after dilly-dallying in the Macy's girls department where I could have bought a dress for 20 bucks, and Annie tried on three dresses that she either hated or didn't fit, we made it to the juniors department.  OMG, as Annie would say--dress bonanza!  Clearly this is where all the teens and pre-teens and wanna-be teens come to find that cheesy dress for the prom or the winter formal or the father-daughter dance.  And unbelievably the first dress I pulled out, a lacy number with ribbon spaghetti straps that came in pink, white, yellow, and thank you, God, black, struck Annie's fancy.  She tried it on, and other than the fact that I have to shorten the straps, it's perfect.  She looked lovely and way too grown up, and she was actually smiling.  Never mind the full retail price I had to pay for the dress and the little cardigan wrap we bought so she won't feel too bear, and the fancy new black flats (also not on sale).  That smile must have been like the one I gave my mother when I tried on the black-and-white halter dress.

  As they say--priceless.

Why Teen Queen?

To state the facts: I am the parent of one teenager and one almost-teen (she'll be 13 in April).  I have been writing about parenting for quite some time new, and reading about it too, but I haven't seen a lot out there for and by the parents of teens.  And I, for one, am finding it challenging.  Very.  Every day.  Not in the same "Stop hitting your sister, yes you may have a juice box, no we don't make guns out of sticks, please, please don't ever write on the walls with marker again, kind of challenging.  No, this is about bad moods upon bad moods, and finding the right "consequence" for your son lighting candles in the linen closet while you're at the gym, and your 7th-grade daughter's best friend suddenly refusing to eat.  This is a whole new ball game of parenting.  

Also, just a side note: I am on the older side of being a mom.  As in peri-menopausal.  So, you can only imagine the hormone swings in this house.  And one last thing.  I am a professional writer.  I freelance about parenting (duh) and food and technology among lots of things, and I have an MFA in Writing that I intend to put to good use when I'm not driving to basketball/lacrosse practice, the orthodontist, the math tutor, the shoe store and the mall.