The Case of the Bad Teenage Moustache Flashbacks

Something terrible happened yesterday. Something that came out of left field, tripped me while I was eating my ice cream cone, and laughed as I cried into my strawberry-stained pigtails.

My son - my teenage son - shaved for the very first time.

He had a moustache, but not a full one, exactly. It was a bad teenage moustache, with dark little hairs hanging unceremoniously above his lips, forewarning everyone that he will soon be nine feet tall and eat three lasagna trays for dinner. The pimples, the moodiness, the sudden interest in girls that doesn't just involve grossing them out - all signs of impending adulthood. But I was able to overlook those because they didn't bug me. That moustache bugged me. Why?

High school: 1990

I was a fourteen-year-old with curvy hips and curly hair. And, while I wasn't the prettiest girl around by far, I had those ever -important markers horny boys look for: insecure with obvious daddy issues. I might as well have had a target drawn on my forehead that said "Please come on to me. I'm looking for love in all the wrong places, and, while I won't necessarily enjoy your attention or even be attracted to you, I'll appreciate that you notice me. Thanks."

I remember a lot of things about the boys who took an interest in me. I remember they were mostly denim-wearing rockers with mullets rivalling any Def Leppard video. Most of them played guitar - or at least tried to - and were in bands that had any combination of the following words: "death", "hate", "mega", "motor", "dark", "slash", and "beer".  All their bands were going somewhere, of course, and you could be that special girl who gets a ride to the top with them - in more ways than one.

But there was one thing I remember more than anything else about these guys: the bad teenage moustache. As they tried to grope me over my well-worn Motley Crue shirt, their annoying little moustaches would tickle my cheek or my neck, making me shudder (they probably thought I was shivering with excitement - sorry, boys). And, when I would finally tell him that he needed to simmer down a little and take things slower, the creepy caterpillar on his pimpled face would curl as he scowled.

The realization that being able to play five power chords on your dad's electric guitar doesn't mean you're going to get laid is a tough pill to swallow.

Anyway, if there's one thing I associate with horny boys who want to dry hump you through their acid wash jeans while "Sweet Child of Mine" plays on the ghetto blaster, it's a dark patch of sparse hair sitting north of the upper lip. It screams "I have hormones! Lots of hormones! Girls to do every girl I see!"

Intrepid's furry little friend started coming in a few months ago. At first it looked cute. You could catch a glance here and there if the light was just right. But by last month, it was growing in a lot darker and was noticeable from across a room. It kind of reminded me of when Joseph on King of the Hill hit puberty. Visions of tassled suede boots and boy makeup swam through my mind. I wondered if other mothers had shared the bad teenage moustache stories with their own daughters. Would they be wary of the fuzz?

Since my son was taking an interest in the opposite gender, I felt it best to give him an edge only a clean-shaven young man can have. It was time to send him upstairs with his dad for a lesson with the electric razor.

He came down after a few minutes looking much better and rather proud of himself. I am relieved for girls everywhere - or at least in his junior high.

My own traumatic horny pubescent boy experiences aside, I have a responsibility to my son to teach him how to look his best. He is fourteen, and if he wants to start dating in the near future, he needs to know what girls find attractive. He doesn't have to change who he is, but using what he has - including a handsome, clean-shaven face - is what's going to score him the ladies.

Or the lady, who he'll meet after he's finished his PhD at 26, and will marry and lose his virginity to on his wedding night, and who he'll live nearby with so I can see my grandchildren every day.

*ahem*. A girl can dream, can't she?

Anyway, my baby boy now has enough facial hair that he needs to groom it. For some reason, I wasn't quite ready for this. I'm thirty-four, for goodness sake. It is not right that I have a child who shaves.

I'm feeling positively ancient. Maybe I'll have a midlife and go be a groupie for a while. I seemed to be pretty good at it twenty years ago. Has anyone seen my Motley Crue shirt and push up bra?

I have a fourteen-year-old and am thus very old

I saw you, and the world came into focus for the first time. It was like the last twenty years simply didn't matter, because the existence I had before you never contained a love so thick, so heavy, so overpowering, that I took it in with ever breath.

Your birth was hard. I lost blood, you struggled for air. We looked at each other for only a moment as I lay fading on a table, being stitched and fed bags of blood while they took you away. X-rays and invasive tests and supplementation awaited you. The darkness of a sleep as deep as I'd ever known awaited me. We wouldn't see each other again for several hours. But in that moment - in that defining, perfect, beautiful moment - when everything stopped and our eyes met for the first time, I knew my world would never be the same. 

Baby Intrepid and a very young Maven 2007

Mother. It's a word beyond words, with a meaning so deep that it can't be summed up in six letters. The transformation I felt that day - the shift in everything I used to know as truth - was profound in a way that even this writer can't put into words. But if I were to try, it was a feeling of inner completion, when I never knew I wasn't whole to to begin with until then. Miraculous, spellbinding, absolutely blindsiding.

I nursed you, slept beside you, held you while feverish, calmed your cries. I watched your dad shift from boy to man in his new responsibilities, walking you back and forth, making you smile, waking up when we did in the wee hours of the night, just to see if we needed anything. He and I grew stronger, fought less, loved more. You turned us from couple to family. You gave us a purpose, when we had spent the last three years spinning our wheels, not knowing what direction to go in.

You grew, you changed, and soon you didn't need me to stay by the bed as you drifted off, or hold your hand on the way to the park. Soon, you dropped the last syllable in "mommy", and fetched your own cereal in the morning while I slept on. Your Rescue Heroes were packed in a box, and picture books were passed on to your brothers in favour of bigger words and fewer bedtime stories read aloud. 

The first day you went to preschool, I walked around like a lost soul, trying to figure out how to spend a day without you. My shadow, my darling, my sweet little boy. I felt empty without you nearby. You were - and still are - my world. But worlds evolve, and sometimes we need to figure out how to move with them. 

Now you're in grade 8. You like girls, you play guitar, and your voice is changing. Your friends matter a lot, all of a sudden, but you still make time for your family. You talk about world issues, and teach me things you learned at school. I easily slip on your shoes to run outside, because your feet are bigger than mine - your hands, too. The little boy who built Lego robots will outgrow me this year. Soon, I won't be meeting your gaze without looking up.  

It's both exciting and scary, watching you grow up. I love it, I fear it, I grieve who you were, and I celebrate who you're becoming.

All smiles and smirks on his 14th birthday (no idea where he gets the attitude from)

Happy fourteenth birthday, my Intrepid little wonder. Who would I be had you not come along when you did? You grew my heart, which in turn grew my soul. I am a better woman, a stronger woman, a wiser woman because of you. You're a kind and patient big brother, a good friend to those lucky enough to consider you one, and a wonderful human being. 

But, most importantly, you are my son. And I am so proud to know you. 

Keep being you. Keep shining brightly. And never forget how much we love you. 

19 Years

I decided to write this post in the living room today, so as to be with the Gremlins Three instead of squirrelling away in the (generally) child-free office. After all, I'm a woman with a family, right? Surely I can get a blog post done surrounded by my beautiful children, right?

I don't know what I was thinking. It's been 15 minutes and I've managed to write one lousy paragraph. One. I've broken up two fights, comforted a sobbing child, managed to get a dog to stop barking with excitement as Spawnling taunted her with a very loud squeaky toy, and threatened to take the highly anticipated chocolate store trip away if everyone didn't give mommy some freaking quiet time to write her gosh darn blog post (Yes, I managed not to swear. It took more effort than I could possibly convey in writing).

The threat is working -- for now. I'll write quickly. Please excuse any grammatical errors or accidental cursing that may happen during the making of this post.

Wait a minute. My husband just came in and started talking my ear off. Does he not understand the mental zen I need to achieve to write such masterpieces? He so owes me coffee.

There. I just read him the first three paragraphs and he took the hint. Smart man. Onward, shall we?

Today marks my nineteenth year of sobriety. No drugs or alcohol for nearly two decades. It's unbelievable, really, that someone as infatuated with escape could go this long without. And yet, here I am. Thank goodness for sugar and caffeine to get me through the rough patches.

... Hey, nobody said I was perfect. Near perfect, maybe, but not perfect.

Nineteen years ago, I was a fourteen-year-old addict who drank every day, got high whenever she could manage to score, was terribly depressed, cut herself to release the pain, had pushed away any friends I had left, had been expelled from school, and wanted to die more than anything in the world. I was a lost soul with no future in sight.

By all accounts, I shouldn't be here today. By all accounts, I should be dead.

It took some persistent parents, six months in rehab, countless self-help meetings, lots of therapy, and a willingness to change that I had no idea I even possessed, but here I am, at 33, alive and sane enough to tell the tale.

"We have a good life," Geekster said to me this morning as we sat outside and had our morning coffee. The littlest gremlins were running around with their new water guns, the sun shining down on their bare shoulders. Their laughs infectious, I smiled wide.

We really do have a good life. Nineteen years later, I have a fantastic husband, three great kids, a home I love, the most incredible friends, and I fall asleep every night feeling grateful for all of it. Even the ugly, frustrating days. Even the overwhelmingly sad days. I'm just grateful that I'm here to experience it, and that I have more than I imagined I would. When you figure you'll be dead before you hit twenty years of age, anything and everything feels like a miracle.

On Friday, Intrepid accepted an honour roll award and made his mama very proud. When I looked at him up there accepting his certificate, I thought of what I was like at thirteen, in grade 7. I was in a completely different place; a darker place. And yet, wonders of wonders, I managed to have a son who is racing into his teen years with a smile on his face and a good head on his shoulders. It's amazing.

Intrepid says it's because he sapped me of my awesome stores while in the womb. He's probably right. It's a good thing they replenish so quickly. I'm an evolved form of awesome, you see.

Thus concludes my sappy moment in the Blogosphere. Thank you for indulging me. It's just that, sometimes, I can't believe I'm here, in this place, so damn happy most of the time. It's cause for making people puke a little in their mouths, it is. Breath mint?

My family members did stop interrupting me for a few minutes. We're still go for the chocolate store trip.

Thank god. I think that would have hurt me more than them.

This is how we do it (or how we became attachment parents)

Know what's really cool about having a thirteen-year-old?

Introducing him to classic movies like Die Hard without cringing at every swear word or gunshot.

Playing an old Super Mario game and kicking his ass - after you play the new Super Mario game and he kicks your ass, of course.

Seeing the great kid he's becoming, and beginning to see the great man he'll soon be.

Admittedly, that last one was pretty cheesy. If I wasn't so doggone smitten with my eldest gremlin, I might puke a little in my mouth.

****

When Intrepid was born, we did a lot of things that felt perfectly natural to us as new parents. When he wanted to nurse, I would nurse him; I wouldn't go by what I thought his schedule should be, or what the books said. When I realized how much he would cry when I put him down, I carried him around in my arms or in a sling - I never left him to cry. And I quickly figured out that we both slept better together, so I brought him into bed with Geekster and I.

Nursing on demand, baby-wearing, and co-sleeping. Nowdays, people have a name for that stuff: Attachment Parenting. If it had that name back in 1996, I didn't know it. I just knew what being repeatedly smacked over the head by my instincts felt like, and they were telling me I had to listen to that baby boy, because he would tell me what he needed if I was willing to listen.

The naysayers roll their eyes at the concept of attachment parenting. They think it's some crazy tree-hugger crap brought on by overly-obsessed mothers. After all, why would you want to give up so much personal freedom in the name of your baby? As a 20-year-old mother, didn't doing all that stuff just cramp my style, anyway?

Not, really no. I would have needed a style - and probably a life in which to show it off - in order for it to be cramped. The Maven wasn't always all that, my precious lambs. She's like a fine wine or a good cheese, getting significantly more awesome as she ages. At the time, my life involved Geekster, Intrepid, and a handful of friends who hadn't completely vanished at the first sign of my pregnant belly. I had a lot of time to figure out how I was not going to conform to society's parenting standards - always a rebel, I am.

But the truth is, that quiet time was the best thing that ever happened to us as a family. We were young, open minded, and willing to do things that felt right and made sense to us. Those early days laid the foundation for how we would raise our all three of our gremlins - by responding to their needs, listening to our instincts, and making that bond as strong as it can be.

Ok, and maybe a wee bit of screaming, and some time-outs, and copious threats to throw out the Wii if they keep fighting and interrupting my damn mommy time. But hey, nobody's perfect.

****

Intrepid is growing up at a breakneck pace. He's almost as tall as I am, and I can slip on his boots with ease. He goes to high school and deals with bullies and druggies and way too many girls already looking for boyfriends (back off, you hormonally-charged succubi!). He'll be driving in three years, voting in five, and getting exposed to a variety of tricky and often dangerous situations far too soon for my comfort level.

This is it; This is the time when we have to start slowly letting go of our baby boy, and hope we've done a good job. Raising a teenager is terrifying stuff. It makes every other stage to date look like a cakewalk.

(I suddenly got an urge for cake. Thankfully, we don't have any.)

But there's something else lingering in our household, and it's not just the stench of unwashed teenage hair: That pesky bond we've forged with our ever-sprouting boy seems to have strong roots. Intrepid touches base with his dad and I every day after school. He's confident, kind, proud of who he is, and enjoys having his friends over - even if I'm cracking lame jokes with them in the kitchen. He wants his parents around, hugs us often, and tells us how much he loves us. He's a good kid who enjoys being part of our family, as crazy as it is (and you know it's crazy if I'm in it!)

I don't lose sleep - yet; There are many more years to come. But I'd like to think that what we're seeing is some of the payoff from the years we've spent making him a big priority. From the time he was fresh from the womb, Intrepid has known he's very important to us and that what he thinks and feels matters.

You don't have to necessarily be an AP-style parent to have a strong bond with your child, of course. Even though that's what I do - which obviously makes it a freaking awesome way - there are other ways to do it, I'm sure. If a child truly knows how much they're loved and cared for - no matter how that feeling is achieved - good things will come of it.

I read a fantastic quote yesterday that said the following:

"Remember, you're not managing an inconvenience; You're raising a human being." - Kitti Franz

I could probably stand to remember that a little bit more, especially when my little inconveniences human beings leave the Lego out for me to step on in the middle of the night. Between you and me and the internet, I found it easier to do this attachment parenting gig before they started talking back. I think I've moved from 'attachment parent' to 'attached but realistic enough to admit I get stressed out and contemplate running off to an adult-only island parenting.'

But I hope we're doing enough, so that, when we gently nudge each of them from the nest, they will soar - knowing they can always fly back when needed for a little guidance and love.

Man. That was even more of a barf-fest than the last cheesy thing I said. That's what happens when I blog late at night. My bitch filter gets flaky and I start being all nice and loving and junk.