97. Thirteen

I remember the evening when we became brutally aware that our eldest child was leaving childhood to enter the dreaded phase of the teenager.

We thought we had done very well so far with the education of our children. We were always ready to give good advice and to show off our perfect offspring. We had been through all the tricky stages: the teething, the potty training, the terrible twos and the tantrums ... You name it, we'd done it. And we had read the books. We had a pile of books on the shelf about how to raise kids. Yet one recently-bought book was sitting on the coffee table, brand new, its shiny cover daring us to open it and read about all the terrible things we would soon have to deal with: parties, boyfriends, ... alcohol, ... sex,  ... drugs! I could not even open the book I was so scared. So I thought if I left it on the table for a while we might get slowly used to this new phase of parenting.

And now here we were, sitting in the kitchen having tea, waiting for our perfect kids to come home from school. 

'I've started reading that book you got about teenagers.' 

I thought that was not a very nice thing to say to me, I mean the weekend was just starting.

'Plenty of time! She's only been 13 for a week!' I replied, shocked.

'Well, time flies.'He said flatly.

I was getting a little nervous wondering what he meant by that when the calm quiet atmosphere of the small kitchen was shattered. We heard the door opening with a bang, then a long loud clatter as a mishmash of school bags, blazers, dirty socks, lunch boxes and water bottles, cricket bats and other unidentifiable objects landed on the tiled floor. Screams and shouts of (perfect) kids arguing could be heard. My husband finished his tea in one long gulp as he got up to calm the crowds.

'Oi! You lot! This fighting stops! Right now!'

Of course it did not. The school bus must have surely dropped off my perfect children at someone else's house and we got this noisy dishevelled bunch instead. 

'You know the rules. Lunch boxes in the kitchen, sports item in the cupboard. What's wrong with you that you can't get this simple rule into your heads?'

What was wrong was the swapping, I needed to tell him but I still had my tea to drink.

In the hall the dispute was not settled.

'Holly and Raleigh ... la la la la la ..... sitting in a tree ...' and as the school bag came crashing on his head, my daughter's brother ran off singing the end of the silly rhyme.

'K-I-S-S-I-N-G'

'Shut up! You one-digit midget!' 

She ran off after him. The baby of the family meanwhile slipped through it all and came into the kitchen. She sat down across from me and calmly helped herself to biscuits and milk. 

'Mummy, I know Raleigh. ... He is a boy in Year 10 and he is so madly in love with my big sister ...  and ... it is his birthday and he wants to invite her! ... Will you say yes or no, mummy?

I didn't have a clue what to say but I didn't have to say anything yet as she added in a whisper:

'He wants to kiss her!'

Oh my word! This was getting worse. Where was my husband? Where was the book? Munching away, mouth smeared with white froth, hair sweaty and dishevelled, tie askew, she looked so cute. And so I got all mellow.

'There's even going to be cohol ...   What's cohol, mummy?'

And then she added purposefully.

'I like Raleigh. He gave me some sweets.'

'Really?' I said, looking at my youngest and thinking with dread about the book on the coffee table. I was not so mellow now. This was too much for me.

Meanwhile, my husband had sent them all off to their rooms and he came into the kitchen, saying: 

'G&T time! And see what take-away dinner we could order. It looks as we might have to read that book of yours ASAP after all.'

I still couldn't speak and so started browsing through the different types of menus while he was chopping lime and getting ice. I was saying to myself: Life's good. Families are fun. Weekends the best part. Repeat after me. Families are fun. Life's good. ...

'Curry or pizza?'

'Pizza.' answered our eldest daughter as she came in. Face like thunder and the look in her eyes so cold I glanced at the G&T my husband was mixing thinking it was going to go solid on the spot. She pulled a chair in a slow precise gesture and sat down, folded her arms purposefully on the table, and said, robot-like:

'I am invited to a party - all the kids in the class are going - all the parents have already said yes - except you - can you say yes - please - thank you - dear parents - full stop. '

I opened my mouth to give her a piece of my mind and a big lecture about life but my husband, cool as a cucumber, turned to her and started what sounded like a conversation out of the book on the coffee table. He was trying to communicate with her about this new stage of her life. I looked at him, impressed. My daughter was not into this communicating thing at all. 

'Dad! Please act like a mature person. All you have to do is say yes. It's about time you gave me some freedom.'

I gasped. Freedom! At 13! I resisted the urge to rush to the lounge and go through the index in the book. I was so glad I had bought it now. 

My husband kept going with the communicating thing. 

'Yes, sure!' He replied calmly. 'But you have to understand that, as your caring parents we ...'

'Understand what?' She was shouting loudly now. 'You need to understand: this is my life.' 

She got up, knocking the chair over, turned around and headed for the kitchen door, opened it and closed it behind her with a forceful bang. She had slammed it so hard that a big chunk of plaster came crumbling down behind her. Thump. We both looked, mouths wide opened. a few crumbs followed and in that hazy late afternoon, I thought it was Christmas and they were fake snow flakes. My husband pushed the now ready drink towards me and left the kitchen, very carefully closing the door behind him. A few more bits of plaster came down. 

Very cautiously, I opened the door again and tip-toed to the bottom of the stairs where I could hear my husband giving a lecture to his eldest daughter about freedom and rights and respect and children in South East Asia, the value of money and the price of food. I wondered if that was from the book.

I chucked the menus into the bin, dialled a taxi and two baby sitters. Beans on toast and fish fingers for the perfect kids. We were going out! We had to discuss new parenting procedures.