The best places to hide your booze when you're trying to parent a middle schooler

Anywhere, ok? Just stash that shit wherever you can.

But seriously.

We've been living in our new town for just about four months and let me tell you, this transitioning business is dicey. Cam, our four year old, has settled in nicely with his new friends at school, but I saw that coming. I wish all friendships could be as easy as Hey, I like blue dinosaurs and pick my nose too, wanna be my best friend? 

Everett, our eight year old, has settled in too, though the first few weeks of school were rocky. He missed his best friend. He didn't know who to sit with at lunch. He played alone at recess.

Thankfully that's all evening out.

Junior, in middle school (that gut-wrenching, unforgiving cesspool of hormones, popularity, acne and homework), is the one struggling. He, too, misses his best friend and hates lunchtime and the cafeteria.

"I don't matter to anyone," he told me and Chuck last night. There were tears. "I don't know who to sit with. No would notice if I never came back."

He thought he was in tight with a group, but suddenly he didn't have a seat, and no one seemed to care. My heart broke.

I know how he feels. I'm pretty sure everyone knows how he feels.

I moved in middle school and remember all too well standing by the entrance of the cafeteria, wondering who the hell to sit with. I felt invisible. Ditto for transferring from one college to the next. And for starting new jobs and meeting new parents at birthday parties and play dates.

Even now, as a freelancer, I'm that transient person who is sometimes on-site, sometimes included in staff meetings or parties. I joke to Chuck that if I didn't show up for a few weeks, no one would notice. And it's true. I did show up one morning to find the office empty. They'd planned a staff retreat and forgotten to tell me.

D'oh.

Juxtaposed against — and exacerbating — the sting of unfamiliarity is the cushy, soul-affirming goodness of being known. I didn't realize how much I've been missing it until a few weeks ago, when I went back to our old house, which we finally have on the market.

While I was there, my neighbor stopped in and hugged me. Really hugged me. She asked about my kids and family. Another neighbor stopped by to tease me about my summer wreathe still on the front door. It was easy and fabulous and so different than the shallow and sometimes strained conversations I have with the mothers at Cam's preschool, who, like Junior said, might not notice if I never came back.

It's going to work out, I know. Junior needs to build history with his new classmates. I need to build history here too. Make memories and share experiences. Join clubs and play sports. All of that takes time, patience, vodka.

So much vodka. Maybe Jello shots too (for me, not for Junior, hello).

I can't help but marvel over how our children's struggles mirror our own and how they look to us, as we are floundering — like desperate fish on the shore — alongside them, for guidance. I want to yell, "Hell if I know!" but I can't, I'm supposed to know shit.

It's all part of the human experience, but damn if it doesn't hurt. And damn if I haven't been having reoccurring dreams of my own middle school traumas, especially now that Junior has discovered Axe body spray. If I close my eyes, I'm back in the gymnasium, slow dancing with my sweaty crush who dumped me two dances later for a girl who would go to second base.

Oh, how I cried.

I wouldn't do middle school again for a billion dollars. I tell Junior that. Chuck tells him that too. Even as Junior is crying and hugging us and he no longer fits in our arms because he's taller than us, we tell him, we promise, it'll get better.

Helping your tweenage son navigate puberty, running, Dude Perfect, parallel parking and birthday cake

Junior is going to be 12 this weekend. That makes this blog 11 years old. Happy birthday to me and to he.



I keep looking at my brown-eyed Junior, wondering where my little boy went. How is this man-child the same little boy who used to ask random people if they puffed? Who called big bridges, big bitches? Thomas the Train was long ago replaced by the Transformers, then Harry Potter, then Percy Jackson, then video games, then Dude Perfect, and now memes and YouTube. They’re strung up like Christmas lights in my mind, trailing back to what seems like years ago and yesterday all at the same time.



Looking at Junior, you’d think he was 15. At 5’4”, he is as tall as I am. His feet are bigger than Chuck’s and he constantly wants to show us his leg hair (all four strands). If his voice cracks the slightest bit he’ll ask, “This is puberty, right? Is this it?” As if the Puberty Bunny or fairy can magically bestow this rite of passage on him while he sleeps.



Never one to care about a mirror, Junior now obsesses about his hair and clothes. He has his own hair gel. He firmly closes and locks his bedroom door while he changes, and every morning he emerges from a cloud of AXE body spray and asks, “Too much?” 



He and his friends have their own vernacular. Things are “cringy.” His two younger brothers are easily “triggered.” If they lose their cool Junior mumbles “get wrecked.” 



Speaking of his two younger brothers, Junior isn’t always a willing leader of this little tribe of men. Directives like, “Well, help them become the brothers you want to be around” carry little weight. I have to remind him daily not to speak to 4-year-old Cam like he’s a bad pet (“I told you not to sit on me, Cam! Don’t do it again!”). 



And poor Everett. Once his partner in crime, Everett has been relegated to the land of Cam. Once in a blue moon, Junior will pluck Everett out and play Legos with him or jump on the trampoline, and Everette beams so brightly I swear aliens on other planets can see it. Basking in the glow of Junior’s attention, Everett will do his best to talk about video games or memes with Junior, putting his hand on his arm and calling him “dude.” There’s such admiration there, it breaks my heart that Junior can’t see it. 



As someone who survived being left in the dust by my older step-sister when she grew up but who also left my younger brother in the dust when I grew up, watching it unfold just hurts all around.



But I get it, it’s the ebb and flow.



I don’t always know how to parent this Junior. We don’t always speak the same language. When he was a toddler, we could solve most problems with a lollipop. Now, his problems resemble a real person’s. We can’t solve his problems, nor would we want to. He has to learn how to succeed and how to fail.

We also have to help him make healthy choices, which is excruciatingly painful. Worse than round-the-clock dental work. He’s still a bookworm but we fight daily about screen time, social media and all the things his friends are allowed to do. “Call of Duty, Mom! R rated movies! They can stay up as late as they want! Stay home alone all day!" (I don’t know who all these parents are but I could care less about their parenting. Twelve is not the new 17.)



And hormones! He is moody AF. One minute he’s rowdy and laughing; the next he’s scowling and huffing, telling me I just don’t get it. Me? Not get it? But I’m hip! I’m in the know.



Ok, no, no, I’m not. I don’t know half the celebrities out there. 


I like to be in bed by 9:30. I now own more comfortable clothes than not.

Despite the fluctuations in temperament, Junior’s quickly becoming a guy friend I’m happy to be around. He makes me laugh! The other day, after I parallel parked our beastly truck, the woman next to us got out of her car and said to me, “You did an amazing job parking that truck. You go girl!”



Now, any time I make a pronouncement Junior clasps his hands and shrieks, “You go girl!”



Like, if I tell everyone I tried a new recipe for dinner, I get, “You go girl!” Or if I tell Chuck I finished a big project before the deadline, there’s Junior in his high-pitched voice: “You go girl!”




Just one last thing in this little ode to Junior...


Junior has always been a Great Dane who would rather be a lapdog, and so I have to keep him moving. I take him on nightly walks/runs with me, and he complains the whole time, dramatically holding his rib cage and wailing about his aches and pains. Kind of like how he is when he is sick. 



The other night, eager to have some peace and quiet, I let him skip the last half of our walk and run home alone. It felt so good to be in my own company, I decided to run two laps around the track by our house. The sun was setting as I finally made my way home, and I ran into some neighbors who were also on a walk.

“Oh good,” they said, “you’re okay.”



“Of course,” I said. “Is something wrong?”



“We ran into Junior,” they said. “He asked us to keep an eye out for you. He said you were alone.”



When I got home, Junior was in the bathroom. “He’s been worried,” Chuck told me. “He knew you were running without your phone on you.”



When Junior heard me coming up the stairs, he burst out of the bathroom and threw his arms around me.

“I was worried about you!” he said. Thrust into his sweaty, pubescent armpit, complete with its three hairs and thick layer of AXE, I had never felt more loved.

"I went around the track twice," I said. "That's why I'm late."

“You go girl,” he said.

Happy birthday, Junior. I love you more than a million universes.