It wasn’t our best weekend.
Nothing earth-shatteringly terrible happened, but we experienced discord of the teenage angst-meets-parents variety. You could put many words to this, not pretty words, either.
Perhaps, because we’re raising a preschooler too, we channeled the considerable wisdom of Kevin Henkes, picture book author and illustrator extraordinaire over the weekend.
I was so rattled I nearly walked up to strangers at the co-op, ones with infants in tow, to warn them they’d made a terrible mistake, as Lilly did to pregnant mice she encountered after her baby brother, Julius, arrived in the very wonderful Julius, The Baby of the World. I reminded myself, almost forcibly, that it wouldn’t be terribly nice to scream something about how those cute smalls would one day become overgrown teens.
Besides, it’s inevitable, yes? Why scare any besotted, sleep-deprived new parents? They fear things like diaper rash and crawling. They have no idea.
Turned out that at that same moment, my dear husband and co-parent was reading aloud from Julius, The Baby of the World to the teenager, to make a similar point.
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What’s the takeaway message here? Either it’s that our eldest has always loved books or it’s that there’s a little mind-merging going on between the spousal pair or it’s that Lilly rules or it’s that there is no adequate warning available. Put another way: teenagers happen.
Or it’s that you have to have a sense of humor under duress. Since most of our struggles occur before the first period bell goes off—that’s at 7:30 AM folks—I tried something new for the wakeup: a spray bottle filled with ice water. It worked. And then he was late anyway.
I may not have a takeaway message, at least not just yet.
