Like Daughter, Like Mother (I Hope)

I awoke yesterday with little more to do than get a haircut and grade some papers. With Scrabble out of the picture, then, I decided to be generous with my time and spend it with Allison. We headed to South Pointe with plenty of time to do a little shopping and get a bite to eat before succumbing to Bieber Fever.

At one point, she steered us to Victoria's Secret. I harrumphed and moaned, my breathing becoming both audible and sporadic and Allison chastised me for being such a noisy bad sport. She had a point. When we walked through the doors of Victoria's Secret, I was shocked that I had not set off the alarm, my ruse--and my cotton briefs--obvious from 200 yards away.

Where, at Victoria's Secret, does a stodgy mom look while waiting for her daughter to try something on? Everywhere I glanced, there were lacy slivers of material in flashy, bright colors, many imprinted with R-rated promises of trysts and temptation. More than once, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. I finally settled on a rack of PG13 sweat pants, their waistbands spattered with tamer taunts.

I am a knucklehead of the highest order. I know that this does not come as a surprise to others but, for me anyway, such a realization carries with it the weight of lost opportunities.

In my sloth-like transformation from "Jane" to "mom," I have spent far too much time looking through my own life's lens when trying to understand what it is my children are seeing through their lenses.

All of this I realized halfway through yesterday's viewing of the new Justin Bieber movie, "Never Say Never."

Never say never, indeed.

Maybe it was hormones. Maybe I was still recovering from some lousy sleep earlier in the week. For whatever reason, though, I was utterly taken in by the movie. Before he'd even set foot on stage, I had already cried two or three times, my awkward 3D glasses pooling the salty evidence against the bridge of my nose.

And then, it struck me. The realization that I'd been doing "parenting" all wrong, when it comes to Allison.

Ever since going through a serious dress-wearing phase in preschool, Allison has set herself apart from me. Not on purpose, mind you. Rather, that's just who she is. More complex and aware than her mother, Allison has lived her life with equal helpings of athleticism and girlishness.

She wears makeup that she tastefully applies each morning. She does nails with the precision of an Old Master. She straightens her hair and owns more products than the neighborhood drug store down the block. She can set, spike and serve like a testy tiger. She likes pop music and dancing. She thinks it would be fun to be a cheerleader.

Turns out, Allison and I are very different people. And those differences can absolutely flabbergast me at times.

But I realized, right there in the middle of Justin Bieber's film, that this is my problem, not Allison's.

For someone who fancies herself to be both open minded and curious about the world, I have spent too long scratching my head about the differences between Allison and me, rather than relishing in all the things she has to teach me.

And so, I vow to leave my lens at home, when it comes to my daughter's life. It is, after all, woefully inadequate equipment to use when exploring a world that is so much larger, so much richer than my own.

It's time for me to be a student again. And Allison's leading the class.