Not Your Children

While my husband, teenage daughter and I were on vacation this week, my sister forwarded this wonderful poem to me. It came at a particularly apt time, as I enjoyed my daughter's company far from the stresses of everyday work and school and life. We shared many things over the past few days, but it was very clear that she is her own person. 

She is with me, but does not belong to me.

She dwells in the house of tomorrow. And I don't. 

But, sometimes she lets me visit. Enjoy ...

Our Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughter's of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Goodnight Tween

We are away this week, enjoying a final family vacation before it all begins again. Five days on the coast of Maine. No cell phones, no email, no texting. Heaven!

So, I thought I'd entertain you with that timeless childhood classic, Goodnight Moon, reinterpreted for a ... well ... more complicated age.

Enjoy!

Goodnight Tween

In the great blue room, there was a tired tween

Who had just made a scene

And a picture of ...

Karen O'Connor, Olympian queen

And there were three CDs

And countless tees

And ribbons of blue

And a random shoe

And leftover lunch that was turning to mush

And a quiet old mother who was whispering "hush"

Goodnight tween

Goodnight scene

Goodnight disagreement that led to the scene

Goodnight laptop

And Abercrombie jeans

Goodnight tees

Goodnight CDs

Goodnight blue

And goodnight shoe

Goodnight lunch that's definitely mush

And goodnight to the old mother now hollering "HUSH!!!!"

Goodnight stars

Goodnight air

Goodnight BFFs everywhere

Smooth Sailing

This morning, my tween daughter and I had an argument.

You see, she had made plans to meet a friend at the beach at 2:00 pm. I knew about these plans. She also had plans to join that friend and her family for dinner afterwards. Alas, I did not know about these plans. I have nothing against the friend or her family. But, we had already accepted an invitation for a cookout at my in-laws.

As per usual, my insistence that my daughter change her (until then, secret) plans met with ... shall we say ... a bit of an attitude. According to her, I "just don't understand." I was also "ruining her life." When words failed, she resorted to sound effects.

My tween daughter does an uncanny impersonation of Chewbacca from the original Star Wars.

At any rate ... disagreements are pretty much par for the course these days. But, this morning's interchange took me by surprise. We hadn't had a single argument for seven days.

In that glorious fight-free week, we sailed with friends from Boston to Bermuda and back again. We visited pink beaches and crystal caves. We ate way too much and saw way too many shows in the ship's "Stardust" theatre. We went sightseeing, shopped and had a proper British tea at a fancy hotel. We lay by the pool, flipped through magazines and listened to steel drums.

Best of all, we got along.

I was reminded over the course of the vacation just how much I like my daughter. She's funny and smart. She makes entertaining observations. She's polite and appreciative. She holds her own in adult conversations. She's an uncomplaining traveler and eager to try new things, see new sights. It sounds corny, I know, but I felt like my daughter was back. We left whoever has been inhabiting her body for the past year in Boston when we pulled away from the dock.

Not only was this new and improved version of my daughter with me for the duration, she actually seemed to want to be with me. There were countless tween and teen girls on the boat due to the fact that two different dance companies had been invited to perform. We saw them everywhere — bikini-clad at the pool, posing flirtatiously for the ship's photographer, making out on the Promenade deck with teen boys they had just met (yes, really), and prowling in packs through the Atrium en route to the disco.

But, my daughter, I'm proud to say, was not interested.

In all fairness, I may not have been the draw. (In fact, I'm fairly certain I was not.) We cruised with my best friend, whom my daughter adores, and, more importantly, her 18-year old. My daughter was no doubt pleased to be hanging out with this older girl. I have a hunch that if the teen had decided to go to the disco, the tween would have happily tagged along. As it was, we stuck together, presenting a unified, if multigenerational, wall of girl power.

The vacation ended, as vacations are wont to do, too quickly. Before we knew it, we were back in Boston. We have nice suntans (thanks to SPF 30), a couple of pounds to work off, and hundreds of pictures to sort through. We have wonderful memories of good times with great friends.

And, I have something even more precious. I have reassurance that my beloved daughter is still in there somewhere.