TEACHING BECCA TO DRIVE

Today, my soon-to-be 18 year-old daughter asked, "When I take my driver’s test, whose car will I use?" Suddenly I was confronted with more issues than I wanted to face.

I’ve spent the better part of the past year, mouth zipped, blocking my temptation to offer my daughter unsolicited information or advice. Clearing up problems between us has reduced itself to leaving a neatly typed copy of my "concerns" on the skirted dressing table outside her bedroom door. And awaiting a favorable response from her has much in common with having my teeth and gums scraped by a dental hygienist.

Why risk harm to my 1994 Volvo, when I can barely afford a tune up? Can I suffer her surly indignation each time we have a driving lesson? And won’t teaching her to drive leave me vulnerable to middle of the night car "borrowing"?

Teaching her to drive seems foolish if not crazy. Isn’t this the same kid who repeatedly ran away, attempted suicide, was busted for shop lifting, and spent three years in therapeutic boarding schools? Isn’t this the same kid who destroyed a brand new chair with hair dye, and flooded the hallway with bathwater? Isn’t this the same kid that cut three schools in seven months, finally graduating from the fourth on home study? Am I stupid, misguided, an all-suffering martyr, naïve or just an ordinary mom trying to figure out what it means to demonstrate respect.

Each picture and expectation I’ve had for my daughter has been as difficult to free myself of as knots on a golden chain. Ever so gradually, I’ve become able to accept, "This is who she is." And now I offer my daughter her own consequences and a means to add charms and knots to that same golden chain.

What a passage this has been! There were the two hours of driving and three hours of waiting at Santa Rita prison for her to visit the boy she fell in love with. There was the money I, on my austere budget, loaned to her soon-to-be-homeless, high-school-drop-out unemployed friend. And there were the countless nights that she didn’t come home and didn’t call.

In the midst of one of my own well-deserved temper tantrums, "You never keep agreements, you have no regard for my feelings or my property," I later realized, that if I feel uncared for and disregarded by her, she must also feel the same about me.

Isn’t that what this year has been about learning how to demonstrate regard even when I don’t get the response back from her that I want? Isn’t this the year that I continually wonder whether or not I’m a co-dependant fool sacrificing my well being to a self-centered teenaged brat?

Nothing is clear. Nothing is certain. And every time I’m ready to boot her out of the house (so she can wise up by eating her fill of reality), I revisit the commitment which I made with her when she returned home from boarding school to help her become formed and informed by every single one of her choices.

Is she getting it? Or, am I, once again, walking on piles of unconscious poop that she’s left at my doorstep? Sometimes I’m absolutely certain that her mistakes are working in her behalf. Other times, well, I just don’t know.

So I put one foot in front of the other, unsure about (despite my degrees and training as a psychotherapist) how to be a good parent. What is the right thing to do? When am I doing too much? When am I doing too little?

From the time I went into labor, being a mother hurt. I endured horrible pain for 28 hours before my daughter came out. All that hard work to create separation and independence! Meanwhile, every ounce of me has wanted to feel connected, close and, shhhh, I’m not supposed to confess this, in control.

In response to all my efforts, I sincerely doubt that my daughter will turn to me and say, "Gee Mom, I really appreciate you."

Nevertheless, this year, as she nears 18, my guide to mothering is this impulse to demonstrate respect. Yes, I will teach her to drive. Yes, I will put my car at risk. It’s my daughter’s step towards self-sufficiency. And, once again, the umbilical cord is being cut.