What is it with teenagers and their unwavering insistence upon doing the exact opposite to all the life expectations you’ve spent years and years heaping upon them?

When I was pregnant with Char I was fairy certain she was going to grow up to save the world. I didn’t know how or when she was going to do this, I was just fanatically positive she would make it happen.

Admittedly, I may have been aiming a wee bit too high with that one. So after a few years I set her a slightly more realistic goal, with the expectation that she would simply sail through school with perfect marks, go on to uni and study something she was passionate about, have a fantastic OE then come back and land her perfect job. Maybe even one related to what she studied at uni. I also expected the Gilmore Girls relationship we maintained through her childhood would carry on flawlessly into her teenagehood, and through our regular conversations about life, lads and everything in between, she’d learn from my mistakes and therefore never have to make any of her own.

Again, there may have been one or two slightly unreasonable forecasts in that paragraph.

She did sail through primary and intermediate with perfect marks, and when she began high school this year I really thought there was a good shot of the first four on the list coming true. Sure our mother/daughter communication had come to stuttering halts here and there, but this was usually due to disputes on how tidy her room was along with the general antisocial ‘my parents don’t understand what I’m going through’ teen angst that seems to kick in at year 9.

However as this past year has progressed, she seems to have become intent on knocking every one of my hopes and dreams right off the Parental Expectation Radar.

More often when she comes home and tells me about her day, it’s to gloat about how she told her science teacher she’s a stupid bitch and ‘oops I might have an after school detention for that one’.  Then she wonders why I spend the night shitty or crying.

Does she not realise that as she tells me these things, I’m remembering the sweet lovely Char I used to know - and wondering at what point she was replaced by a doppelganger?  As her gloating words of “how I bummed out Mr Whoflungdung today” wash over me, I’m thinking of all the parent-teacher interviews where teachers would gush about “what a pleasure it is to have your daughter in my class”, and “I’ve heard so many great things about her” and how “she makes the whole process of getting up in the morning and coming to work each day worthwhile”.

Her school report arrived in the mail today, and I was sadly unsurprised to read that my A-average daughter (who had become a B-average by Term 2 this year) has now become a B-C average with the odd dusting of D.  The main theme of teacher comments being that Char has a tendency to become distracted in class (too busy passing notes), fails to apply herself to her full potential (too busy writing poems about *insert name here* in books to actually listen to what’s being taught)

So now my expectations have been revisited and modified once more.  As far as education is concerned, I’m pretty much just hanging onto the hope that she finishes school. Never mind the uni right now. Just finish school damn it.  And maybe if she manages to do that, she might go on to landing a great job after all. Because I’m developing a lingering fear that she’ll drop out of school, spend half her life bumming around before finally deciding - when it’s pretty much too late - that she wants to do something with her life after all.  You know, just like her mum did.  And my biggest hope/expectation of all is that she’ll rise above me and become something I never was - that she’ll make the most of every positive opportunity she’s given, and becomes the happy and successful young adult I never allowed myself the fighting chance to be.

Despite all the hand-wringing, teeth-grinding I’m doing over this and sense of hopeless futility I feel struck by every now and then, I’m still reasonably optimistic that in the long run, she’ll get there in the end. Teenage years are rough. I clearly remember that. No matter how much you try to prepare your kid for the roller coaster ride that is adolescence, they’re going to sneak off when you’re not looking and find a scarier ride, just so they can say they’ve got one up on you.  So I’m hoping - really hoping - she’ll make a few cautionary mistakes and learn from them quick enough to bounce back wiser than before - without getting too hurt in the process. But truth be told, I’m shit scared of what the next few years might have in store for us.

This morning we saw Char off on a bus to Marton. We’ve rented out her room for $60 a week to a Japanese exchange student and hope that in a few weeks time we’ll have made back the damage she’s incurred on us in therapy sessions. So, good luck Jenny, she’s in your hands now.

… Yeaah of course I’m kidding. Though, it is true that we saw Char off on a Marton-bound bus. (And don’t worry I’m pretty sure it’s a return ticket. ;)) Breelooked no small amount of confused when the bus pulled away and we started walking back to the car without her big sis. She waved to Char happily enough when Jarrod pointed her out on the bus and lifted her to the window, but she still expected Char would be coming back to the car afterwards. For a few moments following the bus departure she kept looking about, expectantly waiting for her sis to materialise before her. Like us, Bree was missing her already. (The feeling only got worse later in the evening when Bree wanted us to play Char’s ‘blanket game’ and we didn’t know the rules. She got shitty, gathered up the blanket and stomped off down the hall to find her sis. Boy were we in trouble.)

Over the years I’ve said goodbye to Char several times at the airport as she’s winged her way down to Nelson, yet somehow it was kind of harder to see her off on a bus. Not at the time - at the time I just got on with it, but afterwards.  When we returned to a suddenly-so-empty house, Jarrod and I both felt a bit anxious. I guess during the drive home from the airport we’re too busy concentrating on the drive home to worry about anything else, and then by the time we reach our driveway, she’s already touched down.  This time, we arrived home with the awareness that her 10 hour journey had only just begun.

She’s pretty damned brave though, and as Jarrod points out; it’s a fantastic confidence-building skill for her to be able to leg it across the country by herself like this. I seriously couldn’t have done it at her age. She’s good at internalising anxiety, so it’s hard to know if she’s worried sometimes.  Of course she had concerns about how she’d know when she reached Marton, but she didn’t let that worry consume her. Not even after I said, ‘don’t worry, if you find yourself in Palmy, you’ve gone too far.’ To which she replied, ‘And if I end up in Brisbane, I was on the wrong bus!’  Goes to show how much more resiliant and confident she is than me, even if she doesn’t always realise it.

One day it’ll be Bree hopping on that bus in the school holidays to go down south to visit family. And I guess by the time she reaches that age, we really will be renting out Char’s room. She’ll be off doing young adult things like flating in some squatty little central AK hole pissing it up with all her uni mates or something. Oh, what a depressing line of thought. I’m feeling really sad and nostalgic now. Wishing as I’ve wished many times before that I could have a few more years of Char’s childhood back so I can enjoy them all over again; wishing I could keep Bree at this age forever; (yet at the same time looking forward to watching them continue to grow); wondering how the hell we’ll survive without our kids in the house to fill it with life and laughter once they’ve grown up and moved on.

 For all that Char spends a lot of her time holed up in her bedroom doing the antisocial teenage ‘I just want my own space/life so my god why won’t you just back off and let me breathe’ thing, she’s always happy to chase her lil’ sis around the house and make her laugh in a way we can’t (seriously, if either of my big sis’s could have been half as fun and loving as Char is to Bree, I’m sure I would have turned out a far happier person). And she still grants us her presence for at least some fragment of our evenings to fill the house with chatter and share in the various family in-jokes that are sometimes funny/insane enough to print off and stick to the toilet wall. For all I might sometimes hold my head in my hands and complain “she only ever wants to talk about boys!”, I’m glad she at least talks to us about that much.

Gods I’m so good at talking myself into feeling miserable. Char’s only away for less than a week and I’m already feeling like this nest is half empty. Guess I’m just gonna have to go comfort eat now. While the cat’s away and all… chocolate, banoffi, mississippi mud pie, cookies & cream icecream, lollies and pizza..  Hell, I’m going to build my very own gingerbread house. Maye lure the neighbourhood kids inside, fatten them up and eat them too! With one less mouth to feed at the moment, there’s more for me!

A few weeks back, my daughter (the eldest one) went to her school’s Athletics Day at a public domain.  For this event everyone dressed up in costume, so there were vampires, devils, smurfs, oompa loompas, cowgirls… You get the point.  Unfortunately a passerby took the toy-gun toting cowgirls a bit too seriously and called the cops.  Because you know, students in fancy dress are always up to no good.  So the armed defenders arrived, as did a circling police helicoptor.

Oh my freakin’ gods. 

Is this world completely insane? Wait, maybe it was the wide-brimmed hats that caused the panic.  I can see how that would happen…

But why would a few McClouds Daughters cause a panic? I’d be more inclined to sic Gargamel on those Smurfs, or phone up God to deal with those devils…

Well, my daughter (the youngest one) smells like she’s dropped a bomb in her nappy. Why can’t she let the nukes go when her dad’s home to deal with it?