Fathers with sons I am sure experience this.  I’m a Mother with daughters.  It’s a coming of age.  It’s a necessity and a progression.  It’s establishing adulthood and boundaries and uniqueness………………………………..            It’s exhausting.

My younger daughter got mad at me last week.  Really mad.  Not angry. Not miffed.  Not perturbed.  But fuming-molten-nail-spitting-mad.  I’m not exactly sure why;  it was actually a disagreement I was having with my older daughter over something stupid when my younger one piled on………………and then all the lights in the room got eclipsed.  Add to all of this, my younger daughter is special needs.  No biggie.  Just a different part of the dance.  Her unique dance.  She just dances to a different tune.  Music is good.  I like music.  I regularly two-step my way through life.

But arguments are arguments…………………………………I’m up for it……………………….bring it on baby-drawers.

She wanted to move out……………………okay………………just don’t let the front gate trip you up on the way out!

But, she put up a good show.  A valiant effort with great perseverance…………………I wonder from whom she got this stubbornness?  Hmmmmmmmmmm………………..hard to say.

She spent the entire day packing everything in her room that was ever in or near her possession.  She packed all things she even vaguely thought about possessing during her young life.  She was moving out. She was moving elsewhere.  (Time to thumb your nose at Mommy.)  For good.  For always.  Forever.  She called the world (until I unplugged the land-line and her cell phone ran out of charge).  She had duffle bags and garbage bags (she used up all the really good ones) and every backpack she had ever owned.  They were all over-stuffed with stuff.

She was sure friends were coming to rescue her and get her out of here and let her get on with her life “sans” bad-Mommy———-just as soon as they got off work.

I agreed that she needed to get on with her life and that she should take her dog-and-pony show on the road………………and move out.  But she had to leave her horse (she doesn’t own a pony)-(and her geriatric dog would never leave the front yard).

I was relying on good, ole’ Mother Nature’s help here and a long driveway, and the steamy/hot summer for help.  Oh, and the bugs.

I can appreciate frustration when I see it.  It has to be dissipated at its own rate.  I was just trying to escape the scald-burn from the boiling teakettle whistle.

Sooooooooooo,  if she needed space from me and she needed to call the world for salvation from the “Bad Mommy”;  I suggested that she wait for them by the mailbox.  To make sure she didn’t miss them; when they came to get her;  when they got off work.

We suggested she leave her filled garbage-bags (the expensive, heavy-duty ones) in the middle of the driveway and not by the road, so the trash-men wouldn’t pick them up by mistake and throw them away along with all of her worldly-possessions.  We also tried to explain that we didn’t want her “airing dirty laundry” out by the mailbox to the neighbors………………….we reached a common-ground of understanding that meant the neighbors shouldn’t see her underwear in the garbage bags (even though they were clean)…………………………sigh………………………..

Sometimes doing little or nothing is best.  We are a family of head-butters. Sometimes when you put up too much resistence, you inevitably meet with equal or even more resistance.

So I handed my Mother/Daughter Spit-Spat over to Mother Nature. She did a better job than I could have ever done, in a way I was never equipped  to handle.

My daughter was going to wait outside for her ride so that she could get going with her better life as an independent woman.  First she dragged a couple duffle bags and boxes out to the midway point in the driveway.  Then she started moving her multiple, badly packed garbage bags…………..the heat was getting to her already (I was watching from the shadowy, vantage point of a dark window in an air-conditioned room).  (I didn’t survive to my sixties without learning how to capture the a/c’d high-ground———give me some credit.)  (Longevity has some merits.)

At this point I thought I would help out Mother Nature just a minuscule amount.  My daughter was struggling with her innumerable bags, so I suggested she load them into the basket of her raspberry-colored, adult-tricycle………………….to facilitate the speed in which she wanted to move out.

That would have been fine, if said-enraged daughter had planted all three wheels of her raspberry-colored tricycle on the sidewalk…………………….but alas, the rear, left wheel was not securely on the cement, but was left in the boggy leaves at the side.

Again from my air-conditioned, vantage point I could see her Mayflower-moving attempt unraveling before our eyes……………………too many bags;  too few secure tires on a secure base;  too much listing to the left & miring of said tricycle, AND too much summer/sub-tropical heat;  along with a rapidly vanishing fervor for an independent life.

But I suggested she keep trying.  And to feel bolstered that the rest of the world was coming to save her from her horrid existence as a Mommy-dominated cave-dweller…………….even though they were late.

The girl does have grit.  This went on through the afternoon, into the evening, and after dark.  I went out occasionally just to check.  I handed her DeepWoods Off to ward off Dengue, Malaria, Zika, & West Nile virus…………………(I love the stubborn bugger).  I kept vigil from my air-conditioned lair.

At about 11:00 PM or 11:15 PM she quietly came back into the house, quietly unpacked, and nothing was said.

Thank you Mother Nature.

 

Kumbaya and Namaste…………………..