To My Friends’ Kids
May 14th, 2016 by Kimberly
HI, SWEETHEART! How’s school? Soccer practice going well?
I heard your mom talking to you just now, on her way into the kitchen to get me a cup of tea. That means we have about five minutes before she comes back and expects to have my undivided attention. I wasn’t going to say anything, because I love your mom, but there are things you need to know before she tries that again.
I knew your mom before she had kids. Unlike her other friends, I can tell you the truth. I don’t have kids of my own that I expect her to lie to. You can tell my cat anything you want to about me. She only cares that I get the tuna open on time.
Just now, when she told you what a disaster the house is, and how she can’t find anything because you leave stuff all over the place? Her house looked like that before she had kids. She once had things evenly distributed over the living room floor as she was telling me how she cleaned that day. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my closet, I probably have pictures.
The other day, when she excused herself on the phone and yelled to you that she doesn’t like being a control freak and a nag, she only does it because you won’t listen? She’s always been like that. You should have seen what happened the year my birthday card didn’t reach her until two days after her birthday. It was thirty years ago and I still don’t think she’s recovered.
When she tries to make you think she used to have all this spare time, before she started driving you all over creation? She’s making that up. I remember trying to find time for us to go to Disneyland for a day. You’d think I was trying to carve off six months of her life.
When she rails at you for not telling her where you’re going or making plans without telling her? You come find me. I’ll tell you the story she fed her parents so she could sneak off to an unchaperoned, open-liquor-cabinet party in high school.
And the multiple occasions where she says how you should act around boys, and how you shouldn’t settle? Please. In her younger days, your mother took more crap from men than the L.A. Sanitation Department. When a guy said something that wasn’t very nice and I told her she should break up with him, I got an hour-long lecture about how I didn’t understand him. (She was right, I didn’t. It just took her a while to find out she didn’t either.) Yes, I want you to stand up for yourself, and to have a boyfriend and good friends who treat you well. But know this – your mom wasn’t born with perfect judgment, about men or anything else. Figuring people out takes time, and now and then we all guess wrong. It’s no reflection on you.
Your mom is trying to raise you to take care of yourself, to be responsible, to be strong and independent. She does this because she loves you, like a crazy amount. Because she knows that sometimes there is a big price to pay for making a mistake. Once in a while, it probably feels like she’s trying to control you and that she sees you as an extension of herself. I think down deep, she knows that you are your own person. She even wants you to be. She just wants you to avoid all the mistakes that she made.
Truth is, though – you’re going to have to make some of those mistakes for yourself. You know how I know? Because our mothers did this same thing to us, trying to cajole us past all the pitfalls. Didn’t work for us either. I tried harder than anyone to learn from everyone else, and it just made me afraid to fail at anything. I’m here to tell you that you will fail. At some things. I guarantee it. This is good. If you don’t, you won’t have any empathy for all the flawed beings around you, and we need more empathy in the world. She won’t tell you this, but your mother actually wants you to have fun and try new things. She just wants you to take smart risks, because she’s seen the price some people had to pay for taking dumb ones.
Your mom made all the mistakes you’re making, and then some. She fell flat on her butt more than once. I know, because I was there to pick her up and dust her off, just like she was for me. Just like we still are for each other.
Time to wrap this up. I hear your mom walking this way. If you tell her that I told you this, I will probably deny it. Or not. It depends on the day. But I don’t actually want her to hate me, so probably.
But the next time she starts in and you really can’t take it, you come find me. I’ll tell you all about your mom’s “big hair” phase in eleventh grade. Bring popcorn. I have pictures.
OH, LOOK, IT’S YOUR MOM! Bye, honey! Nice chatting with you!
Kimberly tried telling her cat to be more respectful once. Zoe stared at her and took a nap.
Bwahahaha!
The failing thing is tough. I don’t want my kids to fail, but I know they need to practice failing so they can learn it’s not the end of the world when it happens. (It took me too long to learn that myself.) If they only ever succeed—if things only ever come easy to them—the day they do fail (and that day WILL come) will be devastating. Better to learn it now than later.
It is so hard, but I think the most important thing we can teach our kids is that failure isn’t fatal. If things come easily to them, then they see the small stumbling blocks as bigger than they really are. I know. I’ve done it. Get used to your butt being dusty, folks. It’s going to hit the ground a lot. But you’ll have a lot of company down there.
So adorable Kimberly!
Thank you! Don’t worry, you look adorable in all of the pictures I have from high school!
I love the point that everyone fails- because everyone does 🙂 And the slight desperation factor that parents feel in trying to protect and navigate their children.
I also love that whoever the mom(s) in this piece- they weren’t me 🙂 because from 14 to 40 (sadly, sniff, sniff) I lost my Kimberly.
BUT thanks to the magic of FB- I got her BACK!!!!!
Ha! My nefarious plan of “lull them into a false sense of security by pretending I’m always talking about high school” worked!