A Tale of 2 WAHMs

©Lisa Barker

My middle school-aged daughters recently talked me
into going shopping.  Our second stop was the music
store.

At first they stood there like lumps of clay, girding
themselves for what they anticipated would be a long,
boring wait while mom sifted through hundreds of CDs.
Eventually, they started looking around for themselves
and tried to convince me to buy a CD by one of the
newest pop stars.

What a disappointment when mom picked artists they
hardly recognized.  Blondie?  Rick Springfield?  The
Bangles?  “Fine Mom.  Whatever.”

I played the CDs in the van on the way home.  Before
we even got there, they were claiming the CDs for
themselves.  Apparently, mom’s taste in music isn’t as
bad as they thought it was.  Of course, I was welcome
to sit outside their closed bedroom door and listen if
I wanted.

And so it has happened.  The coolness of the teen
years is settling in between my daughters and me like
fog over the moors of England.  What strange land is
this?  I expect to hear the call of a werewolf at any
given moment.  One moment, there will be two girls
that adore me as their mother.  The next moment there
will be the curl of a lip and a snarl.

The girls think I am silly, but I have assured them
that the growing desire for them to separate
themselves from me is normal.  Especially when I can’t
find them in the store and I have the girls paged over
the intercom.  I’m sure they’d like to put at least
several planets between us then.

“Why did you page us?”

“I couldn’t find you.  I called everywhere.”

“I heard you.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” 

Vague look, roll eyes.

I try to remember what it was like for me at their
age.  I remember hanging on to the joys of my youth
and reaching for the interests of my near future.  I
wanted to be both a child and an adult.  I wanted
toys, and hugs and homemade cookies.  I wanted to be
left alone with my best friends, my books and my
records.

I absolutely did NOT want to hear from my mom that she
knew just what I was going through and why.  Please.

I’ll try not to embarrass them too much.  I mean it’s
not like I’m going to get to drive the Weenie-mobile
like Dave Barry did and show up at their school,
tooting the horn and yelling for my kids to hop in.

The girls have it easy.  As long as I don’t show up in
my Spongebob pajama bottoms and holler like Roseanne
in front of their friends, we ought to get along just
fine.

. . . . . . . . . . .
Jelly Momâ„¢ is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five
and author of “Just Because Your Kids Drive You
Insane… Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!” and is
syndicated through Martin-Ola Press/Parent To Parent.
To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments,
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