Dear Very Much Loved Child-

I am proof positive of every nightmare everyone tells about their children becoming teenagers; saying "where did my sweet little girl go?  Who is this monster?"

I started screaming at my mom when I was about 15 and I didn't stop until I was 21.  I drank at keg parties in the woods and was often caught doing so by the same police officers who were investigating crimes that my father, the circuit's district attorney, would prosecute.  He must have been so proud.  It was my mom, though, that got the cold, hard slap of my rage and self loathing on an every day basis.  She and I have talked about those years many times.  We both find it hard to remember exactly what I was screaming about.  I find it hard to understand why she didn't give up on me and, even more so, how she stayed in that house and kept on going, knowing I'd be going at her at some point of every single day.  The summer after my senior year of high school, I remember yelling at her and saying I couldn't wait to leave and her responding that she couldn't wait for me to go.  One day, I'll write a letter about how my mother and I made our way back to each other.

It seems fairly certain to me that I was the worst teenager in history, though you're welcome to disagree and offer proof that you or a sibling or whomever takes the cake.  I firmly believe, though, that there's only one person who even approaches the level of my horrible teenagerness, and that's my ex-husband.  He's a very intelligent college graduate that would make any parent proud at 45.  I'm pretty sure pride isn't the dominant feeling his parents remember having during his teenage years, though.  I try not to tell other people's stories here and I won't tell the entire story of his teen rage and angst.  Suffice it to say he dropped out of high school and lived with his girlfriend.  I've told you I'm not going to tell his story so you obviously know that those two facts are only the tip of the iceberg.

Together, he and I contributed 50% of the DNA that makes up each of our two children.   That should be frightening to both of us and I assure you, it is.  God only knows, literally, what rogue genes are wandering around in the two of them.  At ten and thirteen, let's just say we've known since they were born that they each had their own "quirks" I guess we'll call them.

We have a video of the younger when he was one-and-a-half or two, sitting inside a laundry basket turned long ways up.  When asked by his father who he is, he answers in an exasperated how-many-times-do-I-have-to-introduce-myself voice, "Baby Jesus Dough Boy," quickly followed by a firm "DO NOT TAKE A PICTURE OF ME, DAD!"  Maybe I'll pop it up here one time if I ever figure out how to do that.  Everyone who's ever seen it has laughed until the crying or pants peeing point.

As for the thirteen year old, it's hard to separate the quirks from the personality, and I'm not sure we're meant to.  He's almost as much of an insomniac as I am.  To try to help me fall asleep, I use a noise machine that makes many soothing sounds.  My favorite is the "rain" setting.  I got one of these for him, too.  He doesn't use it and I finally gave it away.  He falls asleep with headphones on which blare screaming, roaring, pounding music so loudly that my husband and I marvel when we can hear it from our room across the hall.  He adores duct tape and covers everything he can with it.  His dad and his wife and my husband and I all chipped in and got him a fancy ipod that goes by some other name I'm not remembering.  In any event, when I bought it, you could have it engraved for free.  I had them put "we love you, teenager" and then all four of our names.  A few days after his birthday, I noticed that he had covered the thing in an elaborate pattern of duct tape.  When my husband saw it, he asked the kid why he would cover up the engraving.  He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.  Of course, he'd forgotten all about the engraving.  He called from the dentist the other day.  He had a cavity and wanted to ask me if he could get a blue filling.  I told him to ask the dentist if it was more expensive than a regular filling.  Cheaper. 

His dream is to live in a tattoo parlor.  My friend is a tattoo artist and owns a shop.  When my child saw the inside of the shop with crazy posters everywhere and guys wearing denim tank tops and bandannas, chairs filled with Hell's Angels types, so covered in tattoos you can't really tell what the artist is actually adding to all of that, he was stunned into silence.  After soaking it in for a minute or so, he announced "I want to live here forever.  I will work for free if I can just live here forever."



Granted, he's just entered teenagerhood, but so far, it's confounding.  While his dad and I both turned to painful memories of our former selves upon becoming teenagers, this kid seems to have come into his own.  He stands up straight and has some self-confidence.  He takes some chances and has developed some hard-won courage.  Peer pressure exerts little influence on him.  He likes being different.  I introduced him to the pharmacist at Rite Aid the other day.  Bill is a friend of mine and I like him very much.  Jacob shook hands, introduced himself, listened attentively to Bill talk about hunting and responded with a very coherent thought on the subject.  The whole thing ended with that teenage son of mine saying, "nice to meet you, Mr._______."  I just stood there, amazed and grateful that this person was my child.


So why, I've been asking myself since this kid was in kindergarten, can't he just do his homework and remember what he needs to take to school and bring home from school.  He's smart.  Scary smart.  Much smarter than either of his parents and most people either of his parents know.  On the other hand, I've actually pinned his homework onto his jacket (with more than one safety pin!) and watched him walk from the car to school with the paper attached, only to pick him up after school and hear that he got a pink slip and would have to serve a "corrective" (the pc name now used instead of "detention"-give me a fucking break...you still have to sit there and write sentences over and over or stay really still while it's sunny out or-if you're a lucky Catholic school kid-memorize bible verses).

I've often been driven to tears doing the laundry and not having any uniform shirts for him to wear the next morning (thank God Almighty they're in public school now and can just dress like the slobs they are in whatever I've managed to get clean).  You'd think I'd remember from one incident to the next that all the shirts are in his locker, but give me a break, baby, cuz I've got a lot on my mind just like you.  I attended many, many days of 4th and 5th grades with him trying to help him "develop good study habits" (I have to admit right now, I also attended a few weeks...months??? of nursery school in the name of my inability to leave a child screaming "mommy!" like he was being hideously tortured and literally clawing at the door or holding onto my pants, dragging along while I tried to walk out).  His dad and I could each have those things other people call retirement funds if we wouldn't have purchased so many "organizational tools" for this child.  He's beyond capable of doing his work and getting good grades, but he never, ever has.

Bottom line:  he either refuses to do homework or loses it, resists doing anything he's told to do by any teacher (sorry to his dad but I'm going to have to say that's his DNA at work) and generally walks around with rubber bands, gum wrappers and rocks falling out of his pockets and backpack, leaving a trail behind him...so he can find his way home???  The worst part is, we all go at him and tell him he needs to get good grades and be responsible and hurry up about it, and this pretty much sends him into a panic.  He starts lying with the first missed homework assignment, immediately gets overwhelmed with the combination of the missed homework and the lie, misses more homework, keeps lying...and by the time he brings home a progress sheet or report card, he's a total wreck and it all comes pouring out.  I can't stand it when he lies and neither can his dad.  Neither of us, though, wants him to feel like shit all the time.

Recently, to "give him a fresh start," his dad and I decided to switch the boys from the Catholic school (which we hated and the only reason they were staying is because they kept saying they didn't want to leave their friends and their dad and I are both push overs when it comes to stuff like that) to the public school in our small town.  They've been there about a month now and I've been meeting with each of his teachers.  A few days ago, I started to get calls that he wasn't doing his work or wasn't paying attention.  Since these calls started, their dad and I and our spouses have done a lot of talking about the term "fresh start" and what it means to "succeed."  I did something really stupid.  After that gaff on my part (and it's not that I won't admit what I did, just that it could hurt other people if I did), we were on the phone talking and if anyone would have been listening (like my husband was, and he said it was just painful to hear) they would have easily heard that we were each at the end of our respective ropes, truly struggling to figure out what was best for our son.

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Ok.  I'm going to have to finish this letter tomorrow.  I'll give away that it's a happy ending comin' atcha, but happy or not, it's taken a lot to get there and I'm tired.  I'm going to snuggle up with my kids and watch stupid tv at my husband's house since we don't have cable anymore (yes, it's true, we have more than one house, three in fact, and it's not because one is a vacation home...fodder for another letter, and perhaps one of you can give us some suggestion for how we can get out of our housing clusterfuck).  I'm going to take Benadryl and go to any lengths necessary to avoid my usual insomnia...I think I might actually be sleepy instead of just tired, though, and any insomniac will tell you that's key.

So...to be continued...but feel free to comment on how badly you think we've messed things up as parents or what the right thing to do in the situations I've described would have been...although you might wanna wait because I haven't even begun to probe the depths of my mishandling of, to use a general term "school."