Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen
Here's a secret you should know about mothers: We spy. Yes, on our kids. It starts at birth. In those first months we spend twenty-three hours a day trying to get you to sleep, grateful you aren't yet verbal because at some point we run out of lyrics to the lullabies and start singing "Hush little baby, don't be contrary, / Mama's gonna have a coro-nary." And then you finally doze off, and what do you think we do? Go read a book? No, we stand over your cradle and stare, thinking, God, those little fingernails. Those eyelashes. Where did this perfect creature come from?
As you grow older, we attain higher orders of sneakiness. You're playing dolls with your friend, and we just pause outside the door of your room, hmm-mm, pretending to fiddle with the thermostat but really listening to you say, "Oh, my dear, here is your tea," as you hand her a recycled plastic Valvoline cap of pretend tea, and our hearts crack, we are such fools for love. We love you like an alcoholic loves gin--it makes our teeth hurt, it's the first thing we think about before we open our eyes in the morning--and like that, we take little swigs when nobody's looking.
These days I watch you while you're sitting at the table concentrating on algebra, running your hand through the blond curtain of your hair. Or after I've dropped you off at school and you've caught up to your friends, laughing, talking with your hands while your shoulders and hips rest totally at ease in the clothes and style you've made your own. I stare, wondering, How did I wind up with this totally cool person for a daughter?
You have confidence and wisdom beyond anything I'd found at your age. I thought of myself, at thirteen, as a collection of all the wrong things: too tall and shy to be interesting to boys. Too bookish. I had close friends, but I believed if I were a better person I would have more. At exactly your age I wrote in my diary, "Starting tomorrow I'm really going to try to be a better person. I have to change. I hope somebody notices." My diaries, whose first pages threatened dire punishment for anyone who snooped into them, would actually have slain any trespasser with pure boredom: I resolved with stupefying regularity to be good enough, better loved, happier. I looked high and low for the causes of my failure. I wrote poems and songs, then tore them up after unfavorable comparison with the work of Robert Frost or Paul Simon. My journal entries were full of a weirdly cheerful brand of self-loathing. "Dumb me" was how I christened any failure, regardless of its source. In a few years the perkiness would wane as I began to exhibit a genuine depression, beginning each day with desperate complaints about how hard it was to wake up, how I longed for nothing but sleep. I despaired of my ability to be liked by others or to accomplish anything significant, and I was stunned whenever anyone took any special interest in me.
Turning page after page in those old cardboard-bound diaries now, reading the faint penciled entries (I lacked even the confidence to use a pen), I dimly grasp in my memory the bleakness of that time. I feel such sadness now for that girl. This superachiever who started high school by winning a state essay contest and finished as valedictorian--why on earth did she fill her diary with the word stupid? What could any adult have said that would have helped? When I look at my yearbook photos, I'm surprised to see that I was pretty, for I certainly had no sense of it then. I put on the agreeable show I thought was required of a good girl, but I felt less valuable than everyone around me. I took small setbacks very hard. Every time I took a test, I predicted in my diary that I'd flunked it. I was like the anorexic girls who stare at their bony selves in a mirror and chant "I'm fat," except the ugliness was my very self. I chanted "Worthless me" while facing daily evidence to the contrary. I've always considered this to be the standard currency of adolescence. So it takes me by surprise when we're discussing some hassle and I sigh and say, "Adolescence is a pain," and you grin and reply, "Actually, it's not that bad."
As your maturity dawns over our relationship, I think hour by hour about how I was mothered and how I do the job myself. It doesn't explain the differences between my thirteen-year-old self and yours; I take no credit for your triumphs, nor was it my mother's fault that I was depressed. She did her best with a daughter who was surely frustrating. I remember her arguing with me, insisting almost angrily that I was pretty and talented and refused to see it. She must have rained steady compliments over my scholastic and artistic efforts. But compliments help only if one believes them. At some point before age thirteen, many girls stop believing in all praise, even when it comes straight from a mirror. For you it's different. I watch you talking with your friends, or combing your little sister's hair, or standing at the back of your orchestra and elegantly bowing the strong bass line that holds everything else in place, and I see a quiet pride that's just part of your complexion. When you were little I used to declare you beautiful, and you'd smile and say, "I know." Now you're too savvy for that. But in the kitchen after school when you've reported something tough you dealt with well, and I say to you, "You have such good judgment about stuff like that," you'll look off to the side, and it'll be written all over your face: "I know." It's your prize possession. I'd do anything to see you keep it.
When I was pregnant with you, I read every book I could find on how to handle all things from diaper rash to warning lectures on sexually transmitted diseases. I became so appalled by the size of the task that I put my hands on my belly and thought, Oh Lord, can we just back up? But the minute you were born I looked at your hungry, squinched little face and got it: We do this thing one minute at a time. We'll never have to handle diaper rash and the sex lecture in the same day. My most important work will change from year to year, and I'll have time to figure it out. At first I was just Milk Central, then tiptoe walking coach and tea-party referee. Eventually I began to see that the common denominator, especially as mother of a girl child, was to protect and value every part of your personality and will, even when it differed from mine.
In this department I don't think girls of my generation got such a good shake from the guardians of our adolescence. The guidebook for parents then was organized around a whole different thesis; spanking was mandatory, and the word self-esteem had not been invented. The supervisors of my youth loved my accomplishments until I started campaigning against things they believed in. They thought I was beautiful, but they bluntly disparaged the getup required for my idea of beautiful. I wasn't even allowed to say I disliked a particular food. I made almost no significant decisions about my own life: I ate what I was fed, washed dishes but never planned meals, participated in school-sanctioned activities but virtually never hung out unsupervised with my friends. The parents of my time and place worried about pregnancy, drinking, and car accidents--as well they should have, since these shadows would fall sooner or later across the lives of most of my peers. I participated in a mind-boggling number of school-sanctioned activities but lacked time to be me, away from adults, just with peers. That must have looked too dangerous. As a child I'd spent endless hours poking around in the woods or playing disorganized games with other kids in the fields around our house, but once I grew breasts, my unchaperoned days were over. I felt increasingly scrutinized and failed to develop a natural ease or confidence with my peers. I was convinced that my parents would never let me grow up, so I railed against them internally but then felt guilty after, fearing they would mind-read my rebellious thoughts.
At age fifteen I was allowed to go on a trip with the high school English classes to see a performance of Measure for Measure in a nearby city. It was my first experience of Shakespeare (my first real play at all), and I felt elated afterward by this exposure to mature ideas and drama. But discussing it with my parents that night at dinner, I grew tense. There had been some implied sexuality in the play; my brother and I had made a pact not to mention it, but I feared somehow they knew anyway, and I was too nervous to eat. I felt sick inside, as if by watching this wonderful work, and loving it so much I'd betrayed my parents' trust in me and my own goodness.
When I went off to college at eighteen, I promptly went straight
off the deep end of the social/recreational pool. It frightens me to look back on that reckless period of my life, but I also understand it perfectly. I'd been well under control up to that point, but I had no practice in self-control. I was extremely lucky not to damage myself in the process of learning moderation.
As penance for this close shave, I vowed early on to give you more choices than I had, so you could learn self-control in a safer laboratory than I did. The dance of letting go the reins is never easy--two steps forward, one step back. I've spent so much of my life stitching together the answers to the hard questions that it's natural for me to want to hand them down like a glove, one that will fit neatly onto an outstretched little clone hand. I try sometimes. But that glove won't fit. The world has changed, and even if it hasn't (drinking, drugs, and pregnancy are still at the top of the immediate-worry agenda), the answers will work for you only when you've stitched them together yourself.
People say it's because parents love their kids so much that they want to tell them how to live. But I'm afraid that's only half love, and the other half selfishness. Kids who turn out like their parents kind of validate their world. That was my first real lesson as a mother--realizing that you could be different from me, and it wouldn't make me less of a person. When you were three, in spite of all the toy socket wrenches and trucks I'd provided in my program of teaching you that women can be as capable and handy as men, you basically wanted to be the Princess Fairy Bride. You'd have given every one of your baby teeth for a Barbie doll. I tried to explain how this doll was an awful role model, she didn't look the way healthy women should, she was obsessed with clothes, blah blah. Translation: My worldview doesn't have room for Barbie in it, and I'd be embarrassed to have her as a houseguest. I wouldn't give in on Barbie.
Then one day you and your friend Kate were playing in your room, and I was spying just outside the door (yep, fiddling with the thermostat again) when I heard you say, "My mom won't let me have Barbies. But you know what? When I grow up I'm going to have all the Barbie dolls I want!"
Yikes, I thought to myself. Soon afterward, Barbie joined our family.
That was a stunner for me. Believe it or not, it was the first time I really pictured you as a someday-grown-up, completely in charge of yourself (and your menagerie of dolls). Eventually I'd have zero power over you, I realized, so this might be a good time to start preparing for it by shifting from 100 percent to 99 percent control. Let the Barbies come, and let you handle the Social Impact. You did, and along the way you probably learned a thing or two about physics: What happens when you shoot Barbie from a paper-towel tube? Also about disabilities: When the puppy found your abandoned Barbie party and left it looking like the Plane-Crash Barbie Close-Out Sale, I made you keep most of the Barbies, asking, "If your friend lost a leg or a hand, would you throw her away?" (The headless ones we laid to rest.) And I learned to say, when you dressed yourself in bridal veil, roller skates, rouge, and a tutu, "Wow, you have a really creative sense of style." I've never lied to you. I didn't say I thought you looked good, just creative. Maybe that's why you believe in my compliments now.
Every mom has to set limits, but that's never been so difficult with you. When you want something that I truly think will do you harm, I explain my reasons, and then usually let you have a little of it (except if it's illegal, or skydiving) or give you permission to abide by your friends' mothers' rules when you're at their houses (case in point: watching TV). Though you may not notice it, I'm keeping an eye out to see how long it takes you to decide you've had enough. Except for that one time when you put your whole face in the birthday cake, your judgment has proven exceptional.
All your life you've been apprenticing for adulthood. I recognized that when you were in preschool, learning how to be social: having feuds with girlfriends, then forgiving or sometimes moving on. One week they'd shun you, the next week you were queen bee while somebody else suffered. It tore me to pieces to watch, but I knew I couldn't save you. You were saving yourself, slowly. In fifth grade, it suddenly got harder: A boy started picking on you, mostly trying to embarrass you with sexual innuendo. Oh, man, did I want to walk into that classroom and knock some heads together. But I took a deep breath, knowing that even this--especially this--you had to learn to do for yourself. I was scared. It was my hardest mom event so far, and I didn't want to screw it up.
And it is so easy to screw this one up. When I was a teenager, the story I got from the world around me on how to behave with boys was a real song and dance, which boiled down to this: Boys want only one thing, which is to have sex with you, which is too nasty even to talk about, and it's your job to prevent it. They're also stronger than you and likely can do what they want, but if they succeed in raping you it's your fault, actually, because it was your job to avoid getting yourself into a position where you couldn't stop it. Also males are more important, they run the world, and if you want any kind of happiness or power, you're going to have to win their favor. Got it? Ready, set, go.
The day I sat down with you on your bed to talk about the Grade 5 boy problem, I felt as if I were jumping out of a speeding car, blindfolded, into a snake pit. I took a breath and said, "This is a good time for you to start learning how to handle inappropriate male attention." I told you three things: First, if you ever got truly scared, I would intervene. Second, it was fine to get really pissed off at this boy, because everybody deserved the right to go about her business without being harassed; the creepy feeling you had was not your fault, it was his. Third, boys are just people like us, and if they behave sensibly they can be very cool to be around--even in a physical way if that is your inclination, when you eventually feel the confidence and fondness to be with a guy like that.
Finally, I told you that unfortunately there would always be some guys who feel it's their gift to behave as irritants and scoundrels. You'd run into this many times in your life, and a classroom was a safer place to learn to defend yourself than, say, a college bar or a workplace.
Then we practiced role-playing. I wanted you to say, "No, I hate that, you make me sick, go away." You found it hard; your tendency was to be polite, even coy. I realized, with agony, that the world had already begun teaching you that girls should be pleased with, or at least politely tolerant of, male attention of any type. I tried not to hyperventilate. We practiced some more, you learned to take a very firm tone, and you made it through fifth grade. I learned what you were up against. It was not too early for me to begin thinking of you, and talking with you, as a transitional woman, with important disputed ground to claim for yourself on the map of equality. You've kept me posted on the main events in the boy-girl arena, and so far I've been impressed with how you've handled them.
I didn't do nearly so well myself, as a teenager. My first kiss happened the summer after I turned fourteen, at band camp--a school-sanctioned activity during which I was theoretically chaperoned every minute of the day. I met a cute boy named Dave who showed a flattering interest in me, and one evening when we were meant to be washing dishes he asked me to go outside instead, and mess around behind the so-called mess hall. I was scared to death; I went. Our kissing was nowhere near as graceful as the movies, with an icky dampness factor that seemed categorically not too different from washing dishes, but I felt thrilled to have been chosen. After camp ended I never heard from him again because, of course, we'd had no friendship, and I felt creepy about my tryst. I'm lucky he didn't expect me to go beyond kissing. I hope I'd have resisted (I'm pretty sure terror would have helped me out), but I'm sad to admit I can't say for certain. It took me years to get over being flattered and flattened by any kind of male approval. My first relationships in high school and early college were stunted by my inability to separate my interests from my boyfriend's. The guys who did time in that capacity during those years were invariably sweet; it wasn't as if they meant to ignore or malign me. It was just that I felt such pressure to remain coupled that I swallowed my own will to keep from rocking the boat. Like what h
e likes, do what he wants: I couldn't imagine just acting like myself in the company of a guy.
I see a lot of girls your age who are just the way I was then. I remember hearing one of your friends declare helplessly, "I can't say no to boys"--in the sixth grade! I feared for her future reproductive life. But not yours. I can see very well that if a male friend didn't take an interest in the things you care about, or wasn't respectful, you would use your remarkable charm and wit to lose him, fast. Or at least tell him that, as I heard you recently say, "he's not all that and a bag of potato chips." It's a huge relief to me. I look forward to meeting the guys you'll date.
You already know a lot of the things I had to teach myself in my late teens and early twenties. What saved me was nothing short of a complete transformation, the kind of soul-shattering revelation that some people find in religious salvation. I found it in the novels of Doris Lessing, Maxine Hong Kingston, Margaret Drabble, and Marilyn French, along with the words of Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, and lots of others. I began to find these books my last year in high school and then really sank into them in college, reading the way a drowning person breathes air when she finally breaks the surface. I stayed up late reading; I sat all day in the library on Saturdays, reading. Every word made sense to me, every claim brought me closer to being a friend to myself. These writers put names to the kinds of pain I'd been feeling for so long, the ways I felt useless in a culture in which women could be stewardesses but the pilots were all men. They helped me understand why I'd been so driven by the opinions of men. I was not stupid; in pandering to male favor I'd been pursuing what would be the smartest possible route to power in, say, Jane Austen's day, when women couldn't own property or vote. But these writers allowed me to imagine other possibilities. There are still many countries where women have to go the Jane Austen route: Muslim extremists stone women to death if they show their faces and declare their opinions in public, but here you'll only get some hate mail for it. The worst that was likely to happen to me, if I began standing up for myself at age nineteen, was that some guys who handled me with less deep concern than their auto transmissions would probably cut bait and run. This loss could be endured; that was all I needed to know. When my despair finally crystallized as anger, my conversion was rapid and absolute: I cut off my long hair, I began to dress for function rather than sexiness, I got mad at whosoever tried to bully me by virtue of unearned privilege--and I discovered there were guys who actually liked me this way. I joined a women's group on campus, then found a church that was more forgiving of personal lapses of judgment than of larger, social ones, such as war and hunger. I began working with migrant farm workers in central Indiana whose problems were larger than mine: They had no clean water or shelter. I learned more about the Vietnam war than I'd previously gleaned from Reader's Digest. By concentrating on what I could do to make things better for people who were worse off than me, I taught myself to feel significant. Word by word, day by day, I revised the word stupid out of my journal.