Scorched earth

 

A child who shall remain nameless but is a child I helped make woke late on a Saturday morning as though there had been some sort of unpleasant overnight shift in her reality. As though she perhaps had gone to sleep the entitled daughter of royalty or at least extreme pandering wealth but woken the put-upon long-suffering servant-daughter to wretched imbeciles. Her lip curled in judgmental disdain as she tried to distance herself from the mundanity and filth of our existence and expectations.

No, she would not rinse off her breakfast dishes. No, she would not bring down her laundry. No, she would not take the dog out to pee. With wide eyes and incredulity, as though there had been some sort of misunderstanding, she held out her hands so that I might gaze upon the soft uncalloused perfection of her flesh and know she was not a child meant to do labor-ish things.

When I remained stubbornly unconvinced of her delicate superiority, she stood regally tall and within my personal space and offered that she did not have time for my neediness.

By “offered,” I mean she screamed in my face, and by “neediness,” she meant “bullshit.”

I guess I know unspoken subtext when it is bellow-flung at me like invisible bits of hormonal death-wish.

Mark is of the opinion that I take these moments too personally, to which I say … If someone stands tall and close and screams into my face about how she will not be taking any crap from me because she calls bullshit on this day and bullshit on this life and bullshit on the entirety of my authority over her and she screams so loudly my head starts to pound and my eyes start to water and she is literally scream-inserting a headache into my skull about how she will not be doing the things I have asked her to do and that is final and then she turns to her father and starts talking in a more reasonable voice about me but now refers to me in the third person as though I have perhaps left the room to read a book except I am still standing right there and she wonders aloud to her father what might be done about the horror and nightmare and insanity that is SHE and HER and THAT WOMAN as her father makes noncommittal clucking sounds of placation and then she turns back to me and informs me that whatever I thought might be happening on this day I am so very sadly wrong because this day is all about what she wants for a change it is Saturday and it is a day of rest and she will not be taking any crap from me on her day of rest and that is not up for discussion … well … if all that happens …

If all that happens, the very best one can hope for (as the child in this scenario) is that I take it personally.

The worst being the complete and utter unmaking of this child I helped make.

So … personally it is.

On this particular Saturday morning, perhaps sensing the bolts of dismemberment-threat flickering in my eyes, the tragic changeling princess child stomped away from me, screaming and shrieking and bellicosing up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her retreat.

Fine … by … me.

She was gone long enough that eventually, after popping a few Ibuprofen for the headache, I walked the dogs and did the dishes and started the laundry and took the other child to her friend’s house, and when I returned, the previously raging daughter was dancing in the living room to a song I didn’t mind until I watched the video and it was all about strippers and forced sex and drugs and murder and so now I like the song less but it is quite dancey this song and so the child was dancing happily and I stared at her for a moment before walking to where Mark was sitting at his desk, and I asked him, gesturing toward our daughter, wanting to establish where the daughter and I stood, because there were still consequences to be handed down, “Did she apologize?”

“What, to me?” He was confused.

“In general … to the household … to you … to me with you as proxy … did she seem in any way apologetic when she emerged from her room?”

And he said, “No, once you left, she cheered right up.”

I stared at him. I stared at him because he said the words “she cheered right up” as though something meaningful had been accomplished … as though her current cheerfulness negated the need to address any of the unpleasantness that came before. I asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

He said it again, a hint of pleading in his voice, “She cheered right up.”

“So basically, your plan is to eventually be the proud father of a sociopath.”

“What?”

I was silent for a few seconds, annoyed, and then I asked casually, “If I punch you in the face and then smile and sing you a song about murder and pole-sex, you’re saying we’re all good?”

He shook his head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Exactly. So then she doesn’t get to treat me like crap and just move sunshiney into the rest of her day.”

He sighed heavily. “There’s something to be said for occasionally letting things go.”

And on that point, much like my daughter before me …

I called bullshit.

 

40 thoughts on “Scorched earth”

          1. Yes, I was assuming that Mark would have lost the use of at least one of his body parts after that, not even including the punch in the face. And songs would have been sung. Hee hee hee!

    1. Hee hee.

      Motherhood through adolescence seems a much more PERSONAL thing than fatherhood, at least where I live.

      Sigh.

  3. OH!!!! How did we get to this? Mine is fifteen. Then there is the 9 year old who is watching. And I’m so hard on her because I want to stop it from happening again. But I don’t even know how it got this way.
    And then later, “good night hug?”

    1. The child of whom I speak is able to turn on a literal dime from rage to sweetness.

      I, on the other hand, have a harder time shifting gears.

      Always.

      1. “I, on the other hand, have a harder time shifting gears.”

        This is a good thing for a child to learn. Injuries require time to heal, and screaming in someone’s face is an injury just as surely as a punch in the gut is. It doesn’t magically stop hurting the instant the aggressor cheers up. That’s a completely solipsistic way to wander through the world, and one who insists on doing it that way will eventually find that nobody wants anything to do with them.

        1. Almost word for word (next time, I am totally tossing in “solipsistic”), that is the conversation I am recently repeatedly having with Kallan.

          One of these times, it will stick.

          Making a note about “solipsistic.”

          Awesome.

  4. I am starting to believe that certain parts of the human body do indeed also come with special lense-drum-lobe organs through which all of the reality-bullshit is actually processed. The other humans do not get this.

    At all.

    Heehee.

  5. Kill them all. Or dump her dirty laundry in the front yard. Remind me why we all agreed to stop beating kids. Because on a day like that I so would have for you.

    1. You always have my back, Sue.

      But I have learned to be creatively cruel in my punishments with no physical harm done to anyone.

      Shhh.

  6. Teenagers and their hormones are much like toddlers…

    Bringing you to the door of dismemberment to suddenly realizing how awesomely wonderful you are before dragging you back to that same door.

    I took it personally. As a mother, how do you not?

    Dads, unfortunately, don’t seem to have that same tendency. Perhaps because they only had a 10 second job in the making of said child?

    I will be praying for all of you to make it through this tempestuous time. Sigh.

    Also…I am full of alliterations tonight. I am especially fond of the “door of dismemberment.” Snort

    1. Yes to all you have said, but most especially that thing about teenagers being like toddlers. YES. I sometimes stare at this girl and I flash into the past and her chubby stubborn toddler refusal to do anything my way.

      That.

      As for survival? The one in the most danger is actually Mark, a fact of which he seems completely unaware.

      Ahem.

  7. You have much more restrain and patience than I do. But at times I think I live in the same house, where the husband is completely oblivious to the bad behavior of the child b/c he just doesn’t want to deal with it.
    I too call bullshit. Often.

    1. Mark always wants everyone to be happy, a goal with which I am largely unconcerned.

      Happiness is overrated, especially when it means treating others like crap.

      Yes … bullshit indeed.

  9. I have to say she MUST be 14. As that is the age at which all Mothers KNOW this being is an alien in the body of her child. Horrid time for mothers and daughters. I am surprised there is not more killing of 14 year old girls. Mark, well, maybe he should be a bit more afraid.

  10. I am so curious now about how you responded, because I have a similar dime-turning teen boy, & I have never figured out what to do in response to his personal attacks. Usually I just scream back & take some of his ever-diminishing privileges. Let’s make a pact to never introduce our kids, ok? I’m pretty sure they’d make a lovely psychopath couple.

    1. Not sure it would work as well with boys, but I find that girls are HUGELY invested in their public personas (which are not at all the same as their family-life personas).

      I am very creative, but nothing scares the shit out of a teenage girl like the thought of a small bit of video being shared among her friends.

      Ahem.

  11. On a serious note – So my husband recently said to me, referring to when our now 22-year-old and quite changed son was in early teens, “I wondered why you let him talk that way to you.” And it suddenly hit me that HE, the husband, should have been helping out there. I thought I had to deal with it on my own, because. As it happened, my son was doing the same to others in his life, and now is consumed with sadness about it. Never too early to call the bullshit, all ’round.

    1. That is the one saving grace around here … both of my daughters are LOVELY to people outside of their immediate family. I get compliments about them all the time. All the time.

      Which is good but also irritating … knowing that they can handle situations without screaming rudely at people. WHAT THE HECK?

      Seriously.

      1. That’s family for you. You are the only two people in the world that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt won’t suddenly pull your mask off, revealing rows of gleaming stiletto teeth, and eat them on the spot.

  12. In these times, when modern medicine can invent pills to allow old men to father future hormonal teenagers, why in the name of all that’s holy can’t researchers come up with a vaccine for the mercurial homicide-tempting moods of teenage girls? I thank my personal deity every time I hear about these extreme outbursts from family & friends that I have a son who didn’t get the extreme bullshit gene.

    It might be worth reminding a blossoming young she-devil that although she obviously isn’t listening to the wounding words as they fly forth from her lovely lips like bullets from an AK-47, other humans within earshot hear – and remember. The possibility for future regret doesn’t negate the existence of present bullet holes. Ouch, babe.

    Love may conquer all but it does sting sometimes.

    1. We have had that exact conversation several times … after the raging … and she is always sorry.

      But in the moment, those hormones take her from 0-100 in the blink of an eye.

      It’s breathtaking.

  13. I really hate it when a headache gets scream-instered into my brain. Round here, it’s a small boy who does the screaming. I may have been also doing some yelling of my own when this boy was awake from 2 am on, but he is now painting actual sunshines with smiley faces on his easel so maybe I haven’t screwed him up all the way ;)

  14. Two more thoughts

    You know we are nearly the only society which lives WITH our teenagers right? Prior eras either sent the 14 year olds off to work in someone else’s house or sent them away to boarding school. So Snape g deal with them. No wonder he was so surley.

    Second point. Men and teen sons often work out their rages with their fists. So it’s no wonder Mark isn’t taking it personally, to him no fists, no big deal. Good luck with that.

    1. I know you said other things, but the thought of Mark in a fistfight with ANYONE, let alone a teenage son, makes me giggle hysterically.

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