Family Daze
Daughter has reached the age between teenager and child
By Debbie Farmer
There is nothing really wrong with my daughter being 8. I've always thought of it as a nice, non-threatening age. It is just that I can't get used to the fact that one minute my daughter is hosting a tea party with her dolls; and the next, covering most of her body parts with temporary tattoos.
I was caught completely off guard until a close friend explained to me that "8" isn't really an age at all--it's more of a holding pattern between childhood and adolescence.
I finally got the message when she began interrogating me on our way to her new classroom for third-grade orientation.
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, mom," she said. "But you aren't going to wear your long denim skirt again are you?"
"Yes, in fact, I am. Why?"
"Oh, no reason," she said. "But you're not going to wear the matching floppy hat with the big silk flowers, too. Right?"
"Well, I was considering ... ."
"Or the Birkenstocks?"
"But ... ."
"And, please, don't go and ask too many silly questions about things like grades and stuff, OK?"
"Well, I ... ."
"You know," she said, matter-of-factly, "my desk is kind of small and hard to sit in wearing a long skirt and all. But, there are a lot of bigger chairs in places like the back of the room." She smiled brightly.
The more she talked, the more I grew suspicious that a teenager had somehow invaded the 8-year-old body of my little girl.
After all, how could this be coming from the same person who, since she was three, thought I was the prettiest, coolest and smartest person in the world?
This couldn't possibly be the same girl who once insisted on wearing her fairy princess costume, accessorized with a pair of furry pink plastic high heels and a purple feather boa everywhere she went for six months.
Or the very child who had, just the other day, looked up at me with both arms outstretched and shouted "Turn me around and spin me, mom!"
I finally arrived at her classroom--a broken, silent, hatless woman wearing a pair of designer jeans and modern shoes. I obediently sat in one of the "big chairs" at the back of the room, along with the other hatless parents, and tried to look as if I didn't actually know anyone in the third grade--I had just wandered in off the street to take a little rest.
As the school year progressed, I wasn't sure how I felt about the two versions of my daughter, especially since I could never be quite sure which one I was dealing with.
Like the time I sat down in the recliner and was stabbed by a bottle of contraband Fire Engine Red nail polish. I waited until my daughter wasn't looking, then carefully slipped it into the trash. Two days later I found it in the bathroom behind the soap dispenser. So I hid it in my medicine cabinet. She put it on her dresser. I stuffed it into the big garbage can in the garage and gloated over my parental victory. Then she painted it on her toenails.
Shortly after that, she came home from school, put one hand on her hip and announced that if anyone should need her, she would be upstairs in her "apartment" doing her homework.
But, when I least expect it, the little girl returns.
The other day when, after three hours of not speaking because I wouldn't let her wear lipstick to school, she looked at me with big, innocent eyes and asked me to tell her again what color gown the tooth fairy wore and what exactly she did with all of those extra teeth, and if I was "absolutely sure" that she would be able to find our house, much less the tooth hidden beneath her pillow.
I smiled and reassured her, as so many times before, that the tooth fairy couldn't possibly miss our house since it was the only one on the block with Christmas lights up in July. I told her, once again, that the tooth fairy wears a translucent blue gown with silver glitter sparkles and a magic golden crown. And definitely no lipstick. I explained that she flits about collecting teeth strictly as a hobby. Her real job is being the chief executive of a lucrative denture company, that she earned by doing her math homework without her mother telling her, and going to a good four-year college. But, I can tell that she doesn't really believe me.
In fact, I almost expect her to blurt out, "No way," lunge for my lipstick, and announce that she has, at last, found an affordable apartment and will be moving out, Barbie camper and all, for good, tomorrow morning.
Instead, she stretches her arms up to me and shouts "Turn me around and spin me, mom!"
I smile, then put my arms around her and hold her tight as we spin.
Debbie Farmer can be contacted at ParadigmTSA@familydaze.com.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
