Lauren Kessler - My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence

Table of Contents

To Lizzie, of course

This is a work of nonfiction. Every character in this book is a real person. There are no composites or creations. I have changed the names of the kids (except for Lizzie, who wanted her real name used) to protect their privacy, but I have not changed any other details about them. Every scene in the book happened. I witnessed (sometimes participated in, or very occasionally debriefed the participants about) all of them. Every bit of dialogue, every conversation was spoken. I recorded it all as faithfully as I could.

Any liberties I have taken are liberties of interpretation, not fact. I spent this year and a half immersed in teen/tween girl culture and my daughters life, filtering what I sawas all writers, nonfiction or otherwise, dothrough my own eyes, my own sensibilities. I mean to tell truths both factual and emotional.

Lizzie comes home from school, walking down the long access road from the street where the bus drops her off. She makes her way to the side door of our house. Shes wearing (for the fourth day in a row) a particularly unflattering pair of brown corduroy jeans that sag at the knees and butt, a gray Oregon Girls Rock T-shirt (three days for that item), and a pair of blown-out Skechers. On her back is a twenty-pound pack that includes, among other things, several dozen broken pencils, two or three sack lunches that she thinks I dont know she hasnt eaten, and a science book so heavy it makes you wonder if there really is that much science a seventh-grader needs to know. She drops everything on the floor of the foyer, kicks off her shoes, and starts to walk down the hall past my writing room. She knows Im in there. Im always in there, but she doesnt stop.

Hi! I call out. So, how was school? I ask before she completely disappears from view. She turns her head and gives me a look. There may be nothing quite so withering as the look an almost teenaged daughter can give her mother. What is it, exactly, that look? Exasperation, annoyance, disgust? And thats on a good day. Sometimes its pure, unadulterated antipathy. She sighs dramatically and mutters something under her breath. I dont want to know what she says. I can tell where this afternoon is headed.

So, how was school? I repeat. I hear the false, purposeful brightness in my voice, and, of course, so does she. Why am I doing this? Its like baiting a bear. Shes edged back into view, standing in the doorway to my room. Her hand is on her hip, her head cocked to one side, her eyes focused on a point about six inches above my head. I know this posture. I stood in front of my own mother like this countless times. The stance communicates two of the sacred tenets of teen girlhood: boredom and defiance. The message is unmistakable. I choose to ignore it.

School? I prompt her.

Youre always asking me about school, she says accusingly. Stop asking me about school.

Well, I say sweetly, thats how you spend seven hours five days a week, so naturally I... She interrupts me.

I hate school, she says.

You dont really hate school, I say.

I hate it.

No, you dont.

Oh yes I do.

Oh no you dont.

Im listening to this conversation as if I were not the one enmeshed in it, and I dont believe what Im hearing. Shes twelve and in a crappy mood. Whats my excuse? Its a clich that adults revert to being children when we visit our own parents. I wonder if Im the only mother out there who reverts to being a teenager when faced with her own (almost) teen.

Im suddenly reminded of a bit of nasty dialog the writer Gay Talese caught between a famous director (Joshua Logan) and a famous Broad-way actress (Claudia McNeil) in one of his iconic pieces of new journalism. The conversation begins with Logan critiquing McNeils stage performance and devolves into this:

Youre a shocking rude woman!

Yes, Mr. Logan.

Youre being a beast.

Yes, Mr. Logan.

Yes, Miss Beast.

Yes, Mr. Logan.

I remember reading this, years ago, having no clue who Logan and McNeil weretheir heydays were before my timebut being completely immersed in their mutual hostility. It comes as a shockand a wake-up callthat this is sometimes the story of me and my daughter: completely immersed in mutual hostility.

But it wasnt always like this.

There was for us a golden era, a magic decade of peace, love, and understanding that is common in the early years of the mother-daughter relationship. Its like you get a free pass for the first decade or so. You dont even have to work up a sweat. These are the years when Mommy is a saint and a genius, beautiful and beneficent, the font of everything cool and fun. I remember the scores of Wednesday afternoons my daughter Lizzie and I spent together when she was in elementary school. Wednesday was early-release day. I would pick her up at school at one p.m., and we would go roller-skating or bowling or spend an hour at a downtown tearoom sipping hot chocolate from bone china cups and nibbling on the worlds fanciest PB&Js. We did projectsmaking candles, friendship bracelets, tie-dye. We made Valentines Day cards by carefully ironing sheets of waxed paper between which we had sandwiched the shavings of red and pink crayons. (Thank you, Martha Stewart.) We rode bicycles. We hung out at pet shops, oohing and aahing at puppies and letting ferrets crawl up our arms. If this sounds a bit precious, it wasbut in the unironic sense of the word: special, beloved. She actually looked forward to these times. There was no sense of obligation or dreadOh god, I have to go do something with my mom again. No rolling of eyes, no looking at me as if I were the enemy or, less dramatically, as if I were the least interesting object in view.

Back in those halcyon dayswhich were, I am sure, less uniformly glorious than I am choosing to rememberLizzie pitched fits, as the old expression goes, but the anger was superficial and transient. The battles were contained and low risk (yes, you can watch an extra half hour of TV; no, you cant have cookies for breakfast); the damage, minimal; the resolutions, quick. When it was over, she would sit on my lap. At night, I would curl up next to her on top of the covers of her bedthe four-poster bed that had been mine as a childand rub her back until I heard her breathing deepen. In the morning, I would wake her with a kiss. She was warm and smelled like a loaf of fresh bread.

I remember those easy days as clearly as if they were yesterday. Wait a minute, they were yesterday.

Yesterday we spent an hour talking preteen nonsensewho has a crush on whom, whose school locker has the weirdest decorationsand drinking hot chocolates at Starbucks. We walked arm in arm back to the car. She put in a Lucinda Williams CD, and we drummed together on the dashboard. But hold on. Yesterday was also when, just a half hour after we got home from our happy adventure, World War III broke out over the issue of eating fish for dinner. Her mood blackened the evening, as it often does. My husband, Tom, and I sniped at each other. Lizzie shot me the signature look, stomped upstairs, slammed her door, cranked up the music in her room, and then later refused a good-night kiss.