Tweeny

There is a section of department stores called “tweens” now. There 10, 11, and 12 year old girls can find clothes that are suitably fashionable without scaring the hell out of their parents by shopping in the full-fledged Juniors section complete with pre-torn jeans and blaring rock music. These girls are now a major industry with their own music, movies, video games. There are magazines for tween girls and there are websites and Disney stars. This is a demographic to die for.

But the thing I haven’t known until fairly recently is that there is a tween place for parents, too. I am a tween mom right now, and there are no department store areas set aside for me, no rock bands that sing of my particular angst. I am betwixt and between, having kids who sometimes need me and sometimes don’t, who get mad if I don’t walk them to school and then get mad if I try to hold their hands as we cross the street. There are all new rules now, and I haven’t gotten the rule book. Oh, and the rules change from moment to moment. Somebody twitter me the latest version.

Take the netball trials on Wednesday. Naomi wanted me to come and watch her—it was seriously important to her. So at 3 I went off in the sudden autumn drizzle to watch her doing wind sprints and ball drills in the school hall before playing a scrimmage in the newly-sunny school yard. Naomi is lovely at netball, her willowy body and endlessly-long arms stretching and grabbing the ball magically, her determination and drive etched in fleeting lines around her eyes and mouth, lines which time will carve into her face.

I had been briefed on my behaviour before hand. No yelling or cheering, no calling attention to myself or to her. Nothing that would suggest to any of the other girls that I was her mother (why she thinks they might forget is beyond me). I did what I was told, although I smiled at her when I arrived (seemed in bounds). I tried to sink into the wall and become innocuously invisible, as I was the only mother in attendance.

So it was a surprise when, at the end of practice, she turned and huffed home, not a word to me. Aidan and I followed, perplexed, and came home to an empty house with Naomi’s door closed—as usual. I tried to check in with her and got a grunt. Pushing it a little to see what was wrong, I got snapped at. So much for that. So Aidan and I played and talked and hung out for a while. Maybe it was the smell of popcorn or the sound of cards being shuffled, but suddenly, an hour later, Naomi was there, no mention of the sulking or what it was attached to, wondering if she could eat and play with us.

So what do I do with the push-me-pull-you of that? Suddenly, I’m 13 again and feeling slighted by a friend. I don’t want to share my popcorn or my cards with her but to glare at her and mutter under my breath about how she’s missed her chance, about how I’d given up an hour and a half of my day in this slammed-busy week without so much as a thank you, without so much as a daughter to walk home with after school. But I am not actually 13, and so I pushed the popcorn over to her and dealt her into our hot game of Go Fish. This was just a little scab, a little time for me to practice my attachment and my non attachment, to understand that she’s needing to separate and also still needs her mommy. I’m good at the theory of it all.

But the tween-ness of it isn’t just hard on her. It’s hard on me because I never know which Naomi I’ll find and thus which mother I’m supposed to be. When I walk her to school, each moment is a barometer of the constantly shifting weather; some days she drapes my arm over her shoulders; other days she storms off ahead of me. Not knowing which Naomi I’ll get makes it hard for me to find stable ground for where to put my own emotions. Her dance of attachment and separation is my dance too, only I am definitely not leading on this dance floor. The theory is one thing but the practice of it is wearing.

Wednesday night, I went to cuddle with her before I worked out, as I do each evening. Aidan insists upon the nightly cuddle, yelling out for me if I’m taking too long to make my way upstairs to him. Naomi could take it or leave it, shrugging some nights when I ask whether she wants to cuddle or be left alone to read. “S’up to you.” This night, because it was up to me, I wanted to hold my girl again. I climbed on to her bed, stepping over piles of tween magazines and stacks of tween books, pushed the dozens of stuffed animals out of my way, and snuggled down with this angular big girl, complete with velvet sleeping mask. We talked about her day, about why she was so frustrated at the netball trials (had nothing to do with me, of course—she wasn’t even thinking about me when she stormed home). After a while, I got up to go—there was sweating to do and then lunches to finish and the dishwasher to load and I am always pushing against the merciless onslaught of time. Naomi held me tight. “You always go so fast,” she complained. “Couldn’t we slow it down just a little?” And on the one hand, she was wrong. I don’t go so fast, I make heaps of time for her, and I didn’t have time to slow down a little. It was another example of Naomi putting her needs ahead of my needs to work out, to take care of the house, to sleep. But on the other hand, she was naming one of the fundamental truths of parenthood. It goes so fast. And one of the fundamental desires of all of us sometimes: Can’t we just slow it down a little? And so I relaxed back into the conversation, stroking her hair, hearing her sleepy laugh, holding her and being held by her. The memories of the chubby giggling toddler and the imaginings of a graceful grown woman danced at the edge of my mind. I am a tween mom, between childhood and adolescence. Between attachment and separation. But the thing that does not change, the rule book that does not need to be updated, is that I am fully inside of love.