Growing Pains

I've been losing track of the days. Always happens when we take a break from homeschooling. It's a joyous reason to give up the saddle of planning and live in the moment. Don't get me wrong, I like planning. I like the ideal that my life will follow a certain order of my own devising. It seldom happens (seldom, meaning never). There's not enough time or energy to do all I dream up for us. So, I spend my days making lists, crossing a few things off, and then transferring the unfinished tasks to the next day's list. Is there ever a day that starts with a blank list? A day that's a clean slate without one more unfinished chore or a few more new projects on the horizon. I don't think so. Might as well lose track of the days this week while I have the chance.

My older daughter keeps getting comments from her friends about her odd looking mother. The mother with that "thing" on her head, as one of the clearly not subtle friends put it. I guess I knew I would reach this time at some point. Where I have become the uncool mom. The burdensome parental unit hovering in the background. I've explained to her why I cover. She knows the speech. She also says she doesn't really get it, though. It ultimately doesn't make sense why I would choose to be so different. Why should it at the age when you want more than anything just to fit in and be like everybody else?

I feel for my daughter. She's at the time in her life where she's struggling desperately each moment just to define her own image, her own feelings, her own purpose. As if that weren't a daunting enough task, now she has to do the same things for me, too. I'm sure she must wish I would just be another faceless mom in jeans and a short, sleek bob. She must be frustrated that I refuse to blend in. She doesn't show it, though. She doesn't have the answers to satisfy her friends, but she doesn't back down from the comments and the questions either. She still acknowledges me in public. She still sits beside me at the swim meets and walks beside me in the store. I don't think there's any clearer way she could tell me she loves me.

With two adolescents in the house, sometimes the hormones are so thick you can cut them with a knife. I just shake my head in amazement at the things they say and do. But when I feel my frustration starting to bubble, and I'm on the verge of giving in to my anger, I remember this about my daughter. I remember that she loves me for who I am. She accepts me, even when she doesn't understand me. The least I owe her is the same...