Last week, my oldest child turned 17. There are so many adjectives that I could use to describe her, but I think her name, Autumn Lee Sherwood, describes her the best. She’s colorful and changing, and she can be warm and sunny and cold and crabby. She’s refreshing and complicated and all the things I love about her are the same ones that make my hair turn gray. She is confident and talented and outspoken and so darn sure of her beliefs. She is confident in her abilities, and she loves fiercely. She is complicated claiming she hates war but is quick to threaten a sibling with violence.
And she is busy. She is oh-so-busy. She works and has for more than a year. She recently earned her second raise at a job that she has committed to fully. In the summer, she takes on another job that she also fully commits herself to. She plays sports and gets good grades. She collects friends and remains fiercely loyal, and she is an incurable flirt even when in love with just one guy.
This year, her birthday fell on a day that was even busier than most. She had an away softball game — a double header and a band concert. She found a way to do both. She looked forward to the day and was told she would start the game.
She left the game in tears. She didn’t start and sat on the bench except for one time when she did some relief batting. To be honest, she has sat on the bench for most of the season for reasons that are beyond me. She may not be the most talented player on the team, but she has one of the biggest hearts. She tries hard. She never gives up, and even when sitting on that bench, she cheered and yelled and encouraged her team.
My heart broke for her. I still get tears in my eyes thinking about how much she hurt that day.
I am not a parent who complains. I am not a parent who demands my child play. I would be the first parent to pull a child out of a game that gave the coach or another adult any lip or attitude. But last week, I had had enough. I called the coach and at times with tears shining in my own eyes, I chewed out the coach. I even claimed my child was a better player than others who don’t sit the bench. The coach gave me a startled look and said, “That’s your opinion.” It is. But when I watch players walk after a ball instead of run — or fail to move to back up another player — or stand up and walk to go after a ball instead of jump and run, I don’t think any child has to be very good to be better. And my daughters? They don’t give up, and they give their all.
The next day, there was a softball tournament. I knew next to nothing about the tournament. I could tell you the city it was in, but the coach hadn’t shared any other information with me. It made it difficult to plan the day. At the tournament, my daughter played. She played and caught balls that the batter hit. She ran her heart out after balls. She never walked. She was proving my point, and she made me so proud. Right up until she decided to leave after the second game, knowing there was a third game still to play.
Oh, she’ll tell you she didn’t know. Her coach told me differently. She deliberately didn’t “know.” She says she asked 20 people and got 20 different answers. If she asked 20 people, she was careful in selecting those 20 people, says I. Her boyfriend, who her dad and I said could NOT come if he had to leave for work, had to leave for work. She also “had to leave” for work at a job where she could have arrived late because of the tournament (selling popcorn at a local racetrack). When I realized there was a third game just minutes later, I called her and demanded she return. She’d only been gone a few minutes, but it was too late. The clock was ticking. If they turned around, the boyfriend would be late to his job.
I stayed at the softball tournament and stayed far away from parents who might have been wondering where my oldest daughter went. I watched my youngest daughter play at third and first, and I tried to push away the feeling that my oldest child had just pushed me under a bus after I stood in front of it for her.
It was Saturday, and my husband and I had plans to attend a Bob Seger concert. After the third game, our youngest daughter caught a ride with another player back to Houghton Lake while my husband and I made our way south to the concert. We had a suitcase in the back and just let the kids know we wouldn’t be home Saturday night.
When we pulled into our driveway at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, I was surprised my oldest child was not home. I don’t think her dad was surprised. I grabbed my cell phone and called her cell number. She sleepily answered the phone, and I said, “The concert’s over. It was great. What are you doing?” She answered, “Sleeping.” I continued, “Where?” She might have started suspecting something then, but she gamely went on, “Home.” I kept up the inquiry. “Where’s the car?” She had to know she was busted then, but she tried just in case, “In the driveway.” Well, I guess she didn’t SAY it was our driveway and technically, it WAS in a driveway.
“Funny,” I said. “It must have shrunk because I’m home, and I don’t see it.”
Apparently, when she heard us say we wouldn’t be home Saturday, she thought it meant we would be home Sunday afternoon.
It had been over a year since she’d lied to me and then she’d done it twice in less than 24 hours. Or maybe it hadn’t been a year. Maybe it’d only been over a year since she’d been CAUGHT.
Over and over I have tried to instill in my children, and this child in particular, to NEVER lie to her dad and me. Lying, I’ve said more than once, is worse than anything you can do. And I’ve proven this over and over as well. Or I thought I had.
Monday night, the child (and yes, 17 is still a CHILD) went to work without her cell phone. I spent some valuable time talking to someone else’s parents to let them know about a middle-of-the-night visitor they hadn’t realized had been visiting. At 9 p.m., I wondered why my child wasn’t yet home. At 9:20, I had one of my children call work (I was still on the phone with the other parents). At 9:45, my child was still NOT home. I called work back. She’d left work at 7 p.m.
This is when I become punished because I took away said child’s cell phone. I was also punished by my overactive imagination. Will there ever be a time when I will quit imagining my child lying dead in a ditch? And why is it always a ditch?
Unknown to me, one of my other children had called someone else’s cell phone around 9:25 wondering if that person knew where my daughter was located. That person said no. (It was a lie.) That person has continued to say no (despite it being a known lie). And it was this call that prompted the oldest 17-year-old child to arrive home minutes before 10 p.m. after I left the second voice mail on someone else’s phone looking for her.
The someone else in this story turns 17 in July. It is my opinion that my child and this someone else are under the delusion that they are adults. I believe they fantasize about moving in together and living happily together because how can you not be happy when your life is being paid for with the winnings of a lottery they never entered? Or maybe, one of them is really royalty and will soon find out they are rich? Or perhaps a vampire? Or will Haggard show up on their doorstep and take them off to the goblins’ vaults to show them their very own treasure?
I know what it is like to be a teenager in love. I know what I would have done. I remember hearing tapping on my upstairs window when I was still just a teenager. I remember turning on my light and hearing the tapping get louder. I reacted by shutting off the light, grabbing my dog, and running downstairs to my parents’ room. I remember my mom telling me, “It’s probably Steve” (yes, the guy that I married), and I denied it could be him right up until the point my mom and I rounded the corner of the house and saw Steve at the top of the ladder. OK, so I was naive even at 18 after having dated Steve for a year…
I know what it is like moving in with someone you love. In my case, at 18, I moved into a tiny trailer where my cat could let itself outside and at least one raccoon found its way inside without a door or window being open. I know how my future husband complained when I explained we couldn’t afford to buy the $5 a box cereal he loved. I remember eating most of our dinners at his parents’ house, which is a good thing because we didn’t have enough food at our own. I remember trying to pay for the phone and the heat and the electricity and working as a manager, which meant I was making $20,000 a year and gas was only .99 cents a gallon. (She made less than $3,000 last year.) I remember waking up and scraping ice off our TV to watch the morning news, and I look back with my husband and we laugh. It was years before he would tell me that his dad referred to our first home together as the stabbing cabin.
That night, when she cried and begged to call her boyfriend, I told my daughter I wouldn’t get in the way of her relationship, but I was going to punish her for her lies. At one point, I thought she was going to defend the boy and yell at me and instead she told me she loved me and hugged me. There were tears, hers and mine.
Seventeen is a scary time for the child and the parent.
Monday night, I slept in the living room on one couch while my 17-year-old daughter slept on another. She woke up frequently during the night, and I woke up as well. She would pad off, and I would grab the nearest phone and hit the button to be sure I heard a dial tone. I would double check to make sure I knew where the cell phones were located. I would check that the wireless Internet was still unplugged. Neither of us slept well. The next morning, after relaxing for 2 seconds, I hit the button on the cordless phone I was carrying with me along with the 5 cell phones in my pockets, and I heard someone else’s voice tell my daughter, “I will not be treated like a child.”
This was after I’d told her I’d let her call later that day. There was that bus running me down again. This time, I rejected her hug.
Last night, as I went to bed, I unplugged our corded phone and carried it into my bedroom. I removed the cell phones from where they normally charge all night and brought them into my bedroom. I unplugged the internet modem and carried it into the bedroom as well. I also grabbed the cordless phone and mentally inventoried my house to see if there was anything anywhere else that might have been overlooked.
I know I’m not preventing all communication between them. I know that Tuesday in school, a well-meaning little brat went up to my 17-year-old daughter and handed her a cell phone to use. I know there is internet at school and friends with cell phones willing to share. I don’t mean to stop all communication. I just don’t think I should reward bad behavior. And I also think that the oldest child needs to remember how much she has that she gets because her dad and I provide it. It’s easy thinking about moving out when you get a paycheck and can spend the entire thing however you want to spend it. It’s easy to save when you don’t have bills. But don’t expect me to treat you like anything but a child until you can think about moving out using reason and logic and be firmly located in reality. You aren’t there yet if the only thing you complain about is the price of gas.
I love my daughter. I love everything about her, and I love seeing the young woman she is becoming. But I’m really getting tired of that bus that keeps running me down every time I try to do something for her especially when she is at the wheel.
I have not yet heard everything about the trip. I am eager to hear the different takes from the various generations. 
