Debunking assumptions about adolescence

I meekly suggested that I would miss Sarah when she is grown up, but the older and wiser mom corrected me.

"No, no," she said. "Trust me. By the time she gets her license, you'll be thrilled to have her out of the house." Bereft, it seemed, was but a way station on the road to bliss.

She had no qualms about saying this in Sarah's presence, which struck me as unkind, like telling a child that the tooth fairy is a con. We were happy, even if it turned out to be temporary. Why did people want to tell us it would end? Because they were jealous, I told myself. I preferred this explanation to the alternative, which was that they were just like us, once, until adolescence made hash of their mutual affection.

Sarah was staunch in her defiance, probably because the woman's pronouncement scared her as much as it scared me. She clung to me ever more tightly and announced that it would not happen to us, and the other mother smiled a knowing smile and shot me a wink. I did not offer her a second cup of tea.

After she left, Sarah wondered how anyone could say such a thing. I shrugged. I told her I love her, which is my default position when I am confused.

My mother lives half the country away, and I do not recall much talk of love between us, but then, I had a more restrained childhood than Sarah does. In a midcentury midwestern suburb, we were big on proper behavior and suspicious of extremes of any kind. When my mother spoke of love, she did so with exasperation: It was a given in any good family, which was what we aspired to be, so there was no need to mention it. I suppose I am making up for lost time. I like to talk about love.

Bedtime always brings on the hyperbole. We can get a call and response going to rival a revival meeting. Sarah usually starts with a question, to signal that normal conversation has ceased: You want to know something? she asks me. What?

I love you. I love you, too. You're fabulous. I think that about you, too.

We invoke infinity and endless galaxies, and then, when superlatives threaten to fail us, I bail us out with the same last line I have used since we started to do this.

"I love you more than words," I say, and she is satisfied. My husband, Larry, once asked if I meant that I love Sarah more than words can express or more than I love words.

Yes, I said. The older she gets, the longer we go on, even on nights when I do not have a suitcase to pack. Mere mortals like the rose lady might fall by the wayside, but not us.

Or maybe we both know the truth, which is that someday she will want the car keys, and I will stay behind. Maybe we are shouting across the abyss.

The economy depends on girls' having a hard time with adolescence, and on their parents having a hard time with them. If not for the hormonal tsunami known as puberty, there would be no market for parental-advice books, magazines that tell girls how to find a boyfriend and get their parents off their backs, fashions that change as quickly as a teenager's estrogen level, personal-care products to arrest or enhance the slightest deviation from the norm, or celebrities to mimic. Adolescence, the choppier the better, is a retailer's dream.

Parents are supposed to take on a new role when their children reach this turbulent age. The experts exhort us to be the anchor, the foundation; any bottom-loaded, inert object will do. The more mercurial our daughters become, the more grounded we are supposed to be. The mother who wants to be a pal to her girl is immature, self-indulgent, and in denial, and the mother who allows her own feelings to get in the way is shortsighted and irresponsible. The good mother should be firm and placid.

Like a concrete lake. I'm sorry. The members of my family don't even sleep calmly. We consider tranquillity an altered state, little more than catatonia with a smile, and as such we do not expect to keep an even keel throughout dinner, let alone throughout a complete adolescence. I expect to vent as Sarah grows up, because venting was a second language in my parents' house — and because I have not forgotten how it feels for a blimpy little toddler to nestle in the curve of my neck, her warm breath making a steam spot on my skin. Growing up might be a new kind of fun, but it is still a good thing gone. There is an element of loss. Under the circumstances, I am skeptical, if slightly envious, of the perfectly composed.

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