Mothers and Daughters

“Mudda, Fadda, Kindly Disregard Dis Letta......”

I had lunch with a friend recently and one of the topics we covered was how our adult daughters felt some unnecessary compulsion to confess all they’d gotten away with in high school, and how, if we had been more attentive mothers, they couldn’t have gotten away with half of it. I say, there are no perfect parents because there are no perfect children. Every parent gets faced with situations they have never encountered before and every one struggles to handle it as best they can. This is especially true with teenagers. Like any normal parent, for four years I pushed for good grades and fought off homicidal urges. When I cried at her graduation, it wasn’t for joy, it was relief, because now that she had graduated and was eighteen, I could finally legally say, “Oh yeah! Well, thems the rules, and if you don’t like it, LEAVE!”

“You know how you used to call and talk to the parents of anyone I was staying overnight with when we lived off island, Mom?”
“Yes, that’s in the parents handbook; always call and confirm that there will be an adult present and supervising wherever your child is staying.”
“I would always tell the other mom’s that you were really straight laced and not cool at all with drinking and partying. So they’d get on the phone with you and give you all this b.s. about how they were going to supervise us, and after they hung up, they let us drink and do anything we wanted.”
“Lovely, I’m so glad you’re sharing all this with me today.”
“You should have taken the time to meet the parents before hand.”
“You stayed somewhere different every weekend, you think I should have interviewed all those people? You protested every time I insisted on talking to the parents on the phone - you’d had a fit if I insisted on meeting them.”
“You should have insisted.”
“I’m sorry, but I fulfilled my obligation when I talked with all those parents on the phone. If you chose to manipulate me, that’s on you.”
“You never paid attention to me. All I had to do was call you at least once a day on my cell and lie to you about where I was and you never checked on me to see if I was really there.”
“I didn’t suspect you of lying to me, so why would I check up on you?”
“Because you should have checked on my story once in awhile. You know the time I went away for three days with Sierra’s family?”
“Yes....”
“Well, it was her big sister you spoke to on the phone. I actually went to Atlantic City that weekend with my boyfriend who had just learned to drive. I couldn’t been killed and you wouldn’t even know where to look for the body.”
“You left the state without my permission? I’m gonna kill you now.”
“Remember the money you and Dad gave me for my fifteenth birthday?”
“No, not really, but don’t burden me with something I can’t do anything about now.”
“Well, I spent it all on drugs. I was high half the time in freshman year and you didn’t even know it.”
“Freshman year? This all happened in freshman year?”
“Yeah, but then we moved back to the rock and other things happened.”
“Well the mom network on the Island is pretty tight, I can’t believe you pulled off much once we got back home.”
“That’s true, the mom’s on Island are tight, but so are the kids. We just had to be a lot more clever and really cover for each other.”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore. Besides, I will be avenged in twelve years, when your daughter becomes a teenager.....”
“She’s not going to get away with anything! I will be all up in her business. I will know where she is at all times.”
”I am buying front row tickets for that show ! You’re not going to have any more control over her than I had over you.”
“I’ll interview parents before I let her spend the night in some stranger’s home.”
“I’m sure you’ll be a better parent than me, despite your nervous breakdown....”