By The Light of the Silver-y Moon-Day...Monday...

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

...by Walter de la Mare

Teen Mommy/Mummy Blogging and Some More Answers...

"Teens are terrorists who have moved into your home, and who are camping out (in hiding from the Security Services, of course) in an upstairs room you used to see the inside of once upon a time... Probably around the time their room was decorated with Thomas the Tank Engine, or Disney Princesses...

Teen Terrorists are secretive, surly, non-communicative, except with other teen terrorists; They eat you out of house and home, they subvert your funds for their activities, demand money with menaces, and are bigger and stronger than you, and then they sometimes behave as if you had never loved them, and then they move out!"

I left this comment over at the lovely Deb's at Dirty Socks and Pizza. I love Deb's take on life, and she is able to make professional quality film clips, where she tickles her audience's funny bones with her dry and deadpan delivery about the trauma of living with teen terrors, or terrorists, as I chose to term them...

And then another fabulous blogger, Harlene, who blogs here at We are all enlisted, made me snort elderflower cordial out of my nose, I was laughing so much, with this,

"Actually it helps a lot that I just look at the other Mom's with good kids and smile, "I'm not very good at this. Don't worry, yours will NEVER be like this."

I always think raising teens is a lot like trying to follow what the crap is going on on Lost!



Last weekend as I dropped my terrorist teen off at a party I actually found myself telling him and his friends," No drinking...anything, no smoking, no snorting, no needles, no making out, no having sex, no watching others make out or have sex, no taking off your clothes, no taking off anyone else's clothes, no watching anyone take off their clothes", I went on and on with everything I could think of. I closed with the remark, "If you miss 1 of my calls or texts I will show up within minutes NAKED with your FATHER NAKED! Am I clear!!!! We have now gone 8 days without police involvement!!!! YEAH!"

I want to kiss this woman, and I may be trying this tactic next time we drop off the errant Grizz at some party/sleepover or another... The man-child is turning into Paris Hilton, he parties so much - I swear! And surly, I should have made it his middle name...



Raising Teen Terrorists is probably something none of us would expect to do... We do all the right things, read all the right-on parenting tomes that exist, we follow the midwives' and health visitor's advice as if it were scripture... We try not to do what our mothers did... We try to do other things that our mothers did, that worked with us... And ultimately, in raising Teen Terrorists we are alone, unutterably, scarily alone...

So, when Carma asked me the other day, "When in your life were you most happy", and I didn't answer, until I realised when I was sitting in front of my pc in the office, I wondered whether I was hiding something from myself... For I hadn't not answered it deliberately... I think it was a sub-conscious thing... A little like the deep grief I feel that my parents have gone... I don't want to focus too much on happiness, for fear that it will be ripped away from my suckling breast, mercilessly by some unseen and frightening hand of fate...

I was at my happiest when my baby son was safely delivered after a long and (proudly, but painfully), drugs-free natural birth... I was unprepared for the love that took a hold of the very core of my being, making me replete with a sense of my absolute purpose in life, what I had been put on this earth to do... And he has brought me such delight... His arrival in my life had not been wholly planned, but this Baby-Bump would be warmly welcomed...

And... Over the years, this love strengthened and grew, and I indeed felt like a fierce mama tiger; He was very much a part of me, and yet inexorably separate, individual. Very much Himself, in fact... Between my OH, GJ, and I, we do sometimes call him, Himself, or His Grizzship... Perhaps recognising our subservient presence in his life.

Nothing would ever keep me from this child of my womb. I was prepared to protect him up until my dying breath. His own sweet, milk-perfumed, breath and easy way gave me succour.

And then, not overnight, but in leaps and bounds, inch by inch, minute by moment, he became a Teen Terrorist.



And tomorrow, I'm going to tell you, as Artist Unplugged asked - "What makes you angry?" For surely, this is the angel-companion question to Carma's tricky dicky one?

Allez, salut maintenant, mes sticky labels... Je vous adore -- Big kiss? Mwah!

I Wanna Hold Him Tight!

Let's face it, you hardly see him most days... Hell-o, he could even be a rather noisy poltergoost...

Evenings, he's secreted away in his room, either on his mobile, or talking to his fiends on MSN.



Suddenly, he's behind you in the kitchen, the thunder of cloven hooves on the stairs, chucking back food like there is no tomorrow, leaving the fridge door open constantly, so that it's almost like having an extra light in the kitchen! In fact, should they ever extend the aircraft runway to the north, you're in like Flynn!

Mornings, he's spending hours in the shower... Then he's like a Whirling Dervish flinging laundry across the entire house at all hours, attempting to juggle kittens, burning incense, listening to rasta and ska music - VERY LOUD - Long after the Parentals have hit the hay, as a matter of fact.


Tonight, he's jamming with his mates in the 'Music Room', ( - Dining Room as was, do you remember your dreams for that room, Fhina, when you first moved in?! Dashed they were...... Dashed!)

At stupid o'clock, he's hurling insults at you, then staring at the TV upstairs in his darkened cave like a scrupulously clean and well-nourished Mediaeval Hermit...

And then, very rarely, you actually catch him doing something, anything resembling homework... And that's only in the odd moments when he's not gone from the house!


And still he doesn't appreciate how lucky he is in so many ways... You're liberal-minded, (and yet appropriately strict at times); You're tree-hugging, hippy-dippy parents, encouraging his talents, building him up, offering slender olive branches of cool confidence and calm for his delectation and deliverance from evil.

His friends like you. One of them - The Ginger One - cursed forever in relationships by a bitter ex-girlfriend, even said you were cool!

You're not like those parents he told you about, who have a room in the house that they don't let any teenagers into --- Ever! They won't even let their teenager plug in an electric appliance, for fear of him scratching their shining chrome plates... Can you believe that?!

In fact, some of 'those kinds of people' can really upset you... The Nimbies***.

And don't forget the media, endlessly jibber-jabbering on, demonizing young people...

'Hoodies!' 'Law-Breakers!' 'Criminals-In-Waiting!'



And then, last night, he came in from the school bus, weary from the day, full from whatever he had filched from the fridge on his way through to the lounge...

And then he asked to sit on your knee... And you moved so that he could sit, mainly on the sofa, but sort of straddling your knees...

(The child is a giant and would crush you if he sat on you, I promise... - Remember when he had that try-out for the school's Rugby Eleven, and you were pressed up against the kitchen cabinets, hardly able to breathe, let alone budge a whisker?)

So you massaged his back, because he asked you to. You skritched all over his tee-shirt, to try to ease out some of the knots you felt in his muscles. You went on to apply pressure to his neck and shoulders, to grizzle his blonde mop-head, just like you used to.

And he let you...

Then - Just for a laugh - While you were finishing the amateur acupressure, (kind of) massage... That bit when you hold his head gently at the end, and think positive thoughts; Willing energy and light into him... It came to you in a flash...



So you said a few words out loud... To make him smile, which it did, and also to try to get the message over to him... To exorcise and keep the 'teenage demon' out of him... If only for a little while...


I love you more than life itself, but can we have the old one back?!

And, hey, don't kid yourself. It's been like this for ever, for every generation... Hasn't it?!









*** "NIMBY: To be called a Nimby can be a devastating insult, undermining one's well argued case and labelling it a simply a statement of self-interest.
The word was first recorded in 1980; It was the late Nicholas Ridley, an arch Thatcher-loyalist, who brought it to wider usage, in the late 80s.

As environment secretary, Ridley had no fear in appearing abrasive. He was, after all, the man in charge of the poll tax. He also used his position to attack the rural middle classes for their opposition to development, calling it "crude Nimbyism". (Not In My Back Yard = NIMBY!)

At the root of distaste for Nimbys is a belief that the protesters are putting their own interests ahead of the needs of society, and that their objections are selfish rather than principled". Source: BBC News UK