This year Nanny was leaving her beautiful Ocean City, NJ bayside home for 2 weeks in September. Steel picked a Saturday and invited exactly 2 more girls than could fit into our fetid Minivan. When exactly 2 girls couldn't make it, and they were the two girls I've found to be the most contentious; I was feeling blessed. Hurricane Dorian brought cold and rain on Friday, so the sunny, 80-degree Saturday and Sunday felt miraculous. We have entered the "Mom, you know nothing, and you are annoying and embarrassing." phase, so our conversations about the challenge of inviting 2 groups of girls who don't know each other were completely ignored. Steel had 2 friends from her old public school and 4 from the new private school.
I'd warned the girls and their parents that I would be regularly taking their phones from them. I'd learned over the summer that I have to be clear about my screen-time expectations. In August, Steel had 4 friends over to swim in the Wissahickon Creek. While I was making 1 gluten free, 1 vegetarian and 3 normal lunches, 🙄🔫 all 5 girls were on their phones being wretched. 3 would laugh at something and ignore the pleas from the 2 others to see what they were laughing at. All 5 of them were mocking one of their classmate's posts of herself singing in the bathtub. I was terrified to see multiple posts by this young, gorgeous, vulnerable girl being way-too-sexy on instagram and wondering whether I should tell her parents. I was more traumatized about the "mean girl" stuff and my paralysis to explicitly address it. After multiple "Come on guys; put the phones down," I had to raise my voice and say, "GIVE ME YOUR PHONES NOW!"
Steel lost her phone the morning of her party. Tim had caught her on it in her bed that morning. Phones are not allowed in bedrooms nor are they allowed without asking. Most of her friends played with theirs in the car on the way to the shore; I put on a "Modern Love" and a "Moth Radio Hour" podcast for myself and focused on driving. Steel and her new PC friends were talking about boys and kids at school. I pleaded, "BE NICE; only talk about people you like; don't bother with the ones you don't" I also proposed, "Why don't you talk about something else or explain to the other girls who you are talking about and what they are like, so they can follow???" I should have gotten an air horn and blown it periodically with no explanation.
Marissa (public school) exclaimed, "I feel so RICH!" when she first surveyed the water from Nanny's deck. Even the posh private school girls were impressed by Nanny's home. All of this glee was lost on me. From the second we walked in the door, I was mentally calculating undoing anything that we did, anxious about leaving the place as we'd found it. I immediately established a "keep track of your towel, hang it up and re-use it" policy. I mentally coronated myself "Towel Nazi." I'd gotten groceries, picked produce from the garden and packed up the minivan for the trip; however, I didn't demand that anyone help me carry the food and the cooler up or help me put anything away. When will I learn to shout, "THERE ISN'T MAID SERVICE HERE!" like my mother in law? I asked Steel to open windows, turn on fans, and sort out the sleeping situations upstairs, but no one listens to that dorky hanger on, do they?
When the parents were dropping their kids off in Philly, trying to model good behavior, I introduced a PC dad to a GWCS mom as "Doug." We talked for a bit, and she said, "Nice to meet you, Doug." to which he responded, "My name is Brad." I was mortified. I mumbled something like, "Oh geez! I'm so sorry. Doug is Grace Tindall's dad!" Maybe I'd met Doug and Brad on the same day? They are both tall, but Doug is black and Brad is not. Would I have gotten those two confused? In the car, this conundrum was driving me almost as crazy as the middle school gossip. I had a revelation when we arrived. As I was serving Doug/Brad's daughter her gluten free mattress innards, (That's what all of that gf food seems like.) I said, "I think I know why I messed up your dad's name!" All the girls turned. Humiliating mom/idiot tagalong then said, "When I was in 3rd grade, I had a crush on a 4th grade boy, and his name was Brad Douglas!" Steel interrupted and scoffed, "MOM! Why are you telling Caroline that you confused HER DAD with a guy you had a crush on????? That's SO EMBARASSING!" I said, "Steel! It's not the crush part it's the Brad/Doug part; it's been driving me crazy!" Steel sneered, "Mom! You're just making it worse!" in her practiced, pretentious, Heathers voice, She also mumbled under her breath, "Actually I'M making it worse." I reddened like the fat kid getting teased about eating her lunch.
The "I feel rich" girl inadvertently locked herself in one of the bathrooms. I am terrible with mechanical, moving parts, so her ineptitude created a deeper nook in my heart in which she now sits. The locks are confusing, and it's a pocket door. She shouted for a while, but no one heard her. Finally she thought to shriek into the crack under the door, and we rushed over. Tools in hand, I called my mother in law to ask her if this had happened before. The girls were shoving chips and granola bars under the door and into the screen from the deck as if she'd been in there for a week and was faint from hunger. I was worried we'd have to call a locksmith. Steel noticed, looking through the screen, that Marissa hadn't properly unlocked the latch. Marissa turned it at Steel's coaching, and the door slid open. All of the food they'd brought festered on Nan's newly-polished bathroom floor. I told Steel to clean up Nan's bathroom before they left. It was as if I'd asked her to go do volunteer work at a soup kitchen in lieu of rides on the boardwalk.
I gave Steel $140 for the boardwalk. I took 3 of the girls' phone numbers and texted them every 40 minutes or so to make sure all 7 girls were together and alive. I cleaned up from the afternoon strawberry/potato chip/ quesadilla/root beer explosion. Unfortunately I "cleaned" by just finishing everything off and then feeling like like a pig. Tim and I are attempting a "detox September;" I should have just had a drink or two. Instead I hung up towels, tidied, read a sad article about Prince in the New Yorker, and made salad for everyone. Steel texted from Caroline's phone, "Hey this is Steel. We are down to our last tickets, and we got 184 tickets. I already had to pay $55 of my own money, so we can't get food here." I responded, "Just head back I'll order pizza for everyone."
Pizza and movie were uneventful although Steel was LIVID that I wouldn't allow soda, cake or popsicles on Nan's couch. It seemed they were all going to pass out by midnight; Everyone was tired. They went upstairs, but none of the sleeping arrangements had been sorted. A drama involving every shred of bedding in the house ensued because the girls wanted to all be in one room rather than using the existing beds in the two rooms. The kind, easy-going girl who never makes a fuss (also the gluten-free, Celiac-inflicted girl who couldn't eat the ice cream cake because it had Oreos in it which made me feel awful) was planning on sleeping on the floor, but all of the blankets had been taken. Steel had no interest in ameliorating this situation, so Caroline came to me. I ended up grabbing a mattress off of the top bunk in the other room, putting it on the floor for her and finding some bedding the vultures hadn't discovered. Caroline's situation went from the worst to the best. Steel started to whine about needing a mattress as well, but her complaint morphed into: "It's WAY too hot up here; we need to go for a midnight swim." Of course it was hot. She'd not put up the shades, opened all the windows, and turned on the fans. She caterwauled down about the fans telling me THEY DIDN'T WORK. I trudged up and flicked the fan switch on.
Nevertheless, in the windowless, fan-less bedding melee, all of them were overheated, so I agreed to the midnight swim. It was beautiful, and I was impressed by their fearlessness. We had discovered in a harrowing, initial swim that Marissa is not a strong swimmer. (I was this close to using my junior lifeguard skills and grabbing her under the chin and swimming her to the dock. It was a good reminder that, frivolity aside, these girls' lives were in my hands) At midnight, she had no qualms about asking for a life jacket and the floatee; her not giving a damn what anyone thinks is so refreshing. All of my towel-economizing plans went out the window. EVERY towel in nan's house was wet and on the floor somewhere. After the swim they were loud, but they were finally all talking together. I went up at 1:30 to tell them it was too late, and they were keeping me up. They dutifully crashed.
My aunt is an entertaining genius...she's got towels numbered up to 23. "Pick a number and STICK WITH IT!
I woke at 9 still pissed that Steel had been such a lazy ingrate, but she gave me a hug and said with a slight Valley girl intonation, "We're hungry. Can you make sure you sift the pancake mix?" I had made coffee, washed the fruit and was embarking on my gluten free pancake odyssey. "Steel, you can make the rest of the pancakes however you want." (Wow! the lame girl is standing up for herself!) Emboldened, I agreed to drive them to Starbucks, but I did not offer to pay for Starbuck's. (Next time I'll be queuing up Youtube videos about "How to make your own organic frappuccino's at home;" They must exist.) They swam again, and Steel was pissed when "Towel Nazi" reared up and said, "New towels are OFF LIMITS."
I drove them to the shops downtown to get them out of the way of my cleaning up breakfast, linen organizing, towel laundering and floor cleaning. I got a run in, but a shower wasn't in the cards for me. They returned wanting me to take them out to some trendy ice cream place that's also pretending to be performance art. I refused and gave them the rest of the cake and popsicles. I was relieved when Steel begrudgingly agreed we had food and I'd spent enough money already, but asking her to take 2 trips down with recycling and then requiring that she help with lowering the shades and closing the windows was too much. She threw herself onto the couch and bawled at me. At some point she inexplicably hurt her hand and was weeping. Her friends rushed to her aid; I was unsympathetic. She was careless with the shades and broke a vase. To get everyone out of my way, I asked them all to write nan a thank you note and to take their stuff to the car.
Except for the age-appropriate narcissism, I love this posse of girls, and I was thrilled that they were all constantly exclaiming that they were having SO MUCH FUN. I've written about risk-averse, no-nonsense Marissa. Marissa was having a blast; she hasn't gotten a lot of "marauding around with a group of friends" time in her life. Her mom personally experienced not one, but 2 school shootings: one in high school, the other in college. Mom understandably errs on over-protective parenting as opposed to my laissez-faire. Madge is the other GWCS girl. She has a bi-polar, sometimes-off-the-deep-end dad. She often takes care of her younger half siblings, so she's worldly, mature and self-aware. Madge also has a keen sense of social mores and decorum. She and Marissa came back from the Boardwalk a few steps ahead of the rest. Madge exclaimed to me in shock, "It was so AWKWARD; the other girls didn't even speak to us!" By the end of the weekend it was Madge, not Steel, who was the clique-buster. She is responsible for all of the girls' finally connecting. She's effervescent and fun, and I adore her. Penelope is probably the biggest clique-promoter; she's fond of a conspiratorial whisper, but her parent-is-annoyed-better-respond-now radar is top notch. I'd be calling for Steel, and Penelope would hear me and take it on. 'STEEL!!!! YOUR MOTHER IS CALLING YOU!!!!" Penelope is clever, charming, theatrical and writes beautifully. She adores her little brother and speaks of him often which is incredibly endearing. Celiac Caroline is a deer-like dear. She's meek; but she knows what's right and what's wrong; and she rules by example. Her voice is comically high, and she says funny grandmother-type words like "golly!" It's delightful. She is the least likely to stand up for herself, but she has a revered, Buddah-like status with the group. Ava, I know the least, but I found her to be earnest. She is self-absorbed and needing attention, but the way she succeeds in getting it is by telling intimate stories. Her mom had heart disease, and she told us all about it. I think she opened the door for all of the girls to share stories, so I like her. Corinne is the vegetarian hooligan. She's the one (besides Steel) who mutters sarcastic comments under her breath. I don't think she's necessarily directing them towards me, but I enjoy them. She is the most intrepid and devil-may-care of the posse, but she's smart, and she is always a good time. She's earned a special place in my heart because she is so sweet to Toby. She greets her with warmth and hugs both in school and at the house. My favorite memory of Corinne was at their 5th grade graduation. Most girls were teetering around in ridiculous high heels-not Corinne. She's TINY, but she wore knee socks and combat boots and strutted across the stage confronting the very-tall head of the middle school with an aggressive, succinct, Fuhrer-like handshake.
I remember being their age. I was kind. I wonder now whether I was opportunistically kind. Ambitious, I knew then that editor of the yearbook and captain of the teams were elected positions. People who were nice to everyone got elected. It worked; my prep school applications were impressive. I'd heard about "karma" from my hippy 6th grade teacher, and it had made sense to me. (Mr. Williamson also made us listen to the groovy, George Harrison track, "Within you, Without you" for an entire period, and he had us learn Malvina Reynold's "Little Boxes" by heart.) I sometimes resented being kind and letting the mean girls get their way. (not unlike this weekend) A part of me respects Steel for always watching out for number 1, but another part of me worries because I don't know that path. My mom taught me to be helpful; I need to work on this parenting skill. Tim has it down, but I do not. Eliciting my being helpful, though, can't have been hard. I have manic energy. If I'm not doing something helpful/productive, I'm doing something unproductive like over-eating or over-drinking. I have known this about myself for a long time.
I just came across this comic written right after 9/11 by one of my college friends. The comic ends with the line, "There is nothing better than when you and your friends hate the same people; it's like love" She is right. I'm embarrassed to admit that I love the mirth and intimacy I get with girlfriends while mocking other people. What is it about picking people apart that brings girls/women together? Why am I hard on Steel and her friends about it if I do it too?
The worst part of the weekend is that I've realized that my 3rd grade crush was Brad Dickman not Brad Douglas, so again I don't know why Brad and Doug are in the same place in my brain.
I'm lying. The worst part of the weekend was going to bed on that Sunday night at the reasonable hour of 9:30 and finding myself weeping because I'd allowed my daughter to hurt my feelings. I'd told her calmly before bed that, because of her behavior, this was to be her last big birthday party- even though she's only 12. (JP had them through the age of 13.) She didn't make a fuss. Either she was too tired; or she knows she was despicable to me; or she doesn't actually enjoy being the hostess and won't miss it anyway. Parenting is so fucking hard.
2019 First day of school picture
It is crazy how huge Steel looks. She's got at least 3 inches on her older brother.
It is crazy how huge Steel looks. She's got at least 3 inches on her older brother.
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