I Will Never Fit In, And I Blame John Hughes

I will never fit in, and I blame John Hughes.

Growing up in the 1980s, John Hughes movies were my everything. I related to a lot of the movies--I grew up in a mostly white middle to upper middle class suburb, I had divorced parents, I desperately wanted to fit in but also wanted to be different, and I had a crush on the cute guy down the street that looked like Jake from "Sixteen Candles."

I wonder what happened to all the John Hughes characters as grown ups...what do their lives look like now in their 40s and, gulp, 50s.   Here's one version I recently read about Sam from Sixteen Candles (click here to read it) but what about all the non-Sam Bakers/Molly Ringwolds? 

The character I most related to isn't from the bigger hits like Sixteen Candles or Breakfast Club or even Pretty in Pink. Nope the movie I loved was Some Kind of Wonderful, and the character that I felt the most like was Watts. The misfit drummer who was best friends with guys, had a dysfunctional family, played the drums and wore kickass fringe gloves. 


And she said things like "It's 1987, a woman can be anything she wants to be." She was my angsty feminist icon before I knew what that was. She was weird, misunderstood and just wanted to be respected AND loved. And she didn't love rich people. She had a big chip on her shoulder. 

That was what I felt like. Except I was too scared to wear the gloves in high school and never played the drums.

In almost every other way she was me, I was her. 

In the end of the movie, Watts found some good in a few rich people and got a nice-ish guy. 

(The above pics: me during the actual John Hughes movie years and me in the post John Hughes movie years...less attitude, but still an are you kidding me kind of expression/disbelief/wonder at life/circumstances/luck...)

Fast forward 30 years and um, I still feel a lot like Watts. I still feel like a misfit--weird, misunderstood and I want to be respected AND loved. I got a nice guy (a very nice guy), live in a different but still mostly white middle-upper-class suburb, and also feel distrust of the rich (leftover from not just John Hughes movies, but all 1980s movies, think Karate Kid, Can't Buy Me Love...dude, all the rich white people were so over the top, the poor guys=the good guys...Right? Remember Daniel Son from Karate Kid who lived in an apartment with his mom who drove an old stationwagon and had to battle the awful rich guys from the fancy karate studio?).

Now I'm a mom driving the beat-up, rusty minivan (my version of Daniel Son's mom's station wagon) and trying to figure out life in my post John Hughes world...adulthood. This past fall my oldest was going to his high school homecoming dance with a group of friends. The friend's house where the parents were gathering to take pictures of everyone was owned by a dad who drives a Lamborghini, I felt my inner Watts starting to come out. I was judging that dad like he was the bad guy in an eighties movie. I said things to my kid like "money isn't everything" and felt like I needed to be in a drumming montage. It turned out that the dad seemed nice and my kid just rolled with it all and had a great/drama-free time at homecoming (so un-John Hughes movie-esque).

But I mean really, I still have all these 80s feelings. But now my role is an over-worried, underpaid mom of teens just trying to pay the bills, keep my kids healthy, happy and out of rehab, and stay married. It's a lot. I remember watching Sixteen Candles and being horrified that parents would forget their 16-year-old's birthday, but now I totally get it! 

I find myself channeling my inner Watts and other misfit characters from John Hughes movies. I drive around in my rusty minivan trying to hold it together and hold my head up and not be too judgey (of others or myself). Sometimes when I'm walking the dogs (because of course none of my kids will) I walk across a field and hold one fist up in the air like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. When the nice guy that I married takes me on a date I say let's get drunk at Chili's because I know that is what Watts would do, while all the Molly Ringwolds and Lea Thompsons of the suburbs are going to the trendy restaurants that cost a gajillion dollars after shopping at LuluLemon (not that I'm judging, nope I'm rebelling like a sad middle age bad ass). And always wishing for a dance off in a dimly lit gymnasium or a kind loving parental figure to give me some good advice while synthesized music plays from somewhere in the background.

Me getting drunk at Chili's while my good guy looks at Twitter...modern romance. Would this be Watts' life?

Maybe I'm thinking about my teen angst and how John Hughes movies wrecked my perspective because having teenagers is intense (and trigger-y AF). It's nerve-wracking and anxiety inducing and interesting and exciting and  overwhelming and fucking exhausting. Phones and sexting and vaping and driving and bullying on social media and the list of worries and things that could go wrong goes on and on. All while I'm trying to manage my own hormones and mid-life bullshit and not repeat my parents' mistakes and try and finally grow up. 

A lot of the times, I find myself wondering what would Watts do? I mean really, WWWD (What WOULD Watts Do?)?!?!?!?!

I need to see THAT movie. I'm a mess. Thanks a lot John Hughes.

Maybe it's actually not such a horrible thing that I'm so in tune with my inner angsty teen. I mean, maybe John Hughes wasn't only making movies so I could relate to teens when I WAS one, but also for when I had them of my own. I mean the only thing weirder than parenting a teenager is being one. 

Life is hard and weird and so many of us feel like we don't fit in when we are young and old and in between. I personally think it's kind of a cruel joke that teenage hormones and midlife hormones happen at the same time in the same house for a lot of us. 

I know for sure that I would totally want to see the movie about a middle age bad ass Watts figuring shit out while drumming in her garage to get away from her own teenagers and maybe getting high in the library after a heated booster club meeting with a bunch of middle age parents from different cliques who also need to remember what it was like to be angsty and how hard it is to parent kids who are mad at them but still need them and how rejection sucks no matter how old you are and how it doesn't matter who we all voted for in any election because us parents have to stick together if we are going to get through this whole midlife raising teenager business, and then they'd all do a dance, and the nice guy would take Watts to Chili's and get drunk and she would put her fringed gloved fist in the air saying hell yeah it's still a John Hughes movie kind of world...cue synthesized music...end scene...roll credits.

Me on a good day feeling like I got this,
 in an Uncle Buck kind of hat. Don't even get me started about how much  I love John Candy John Hughes movies like Uncle Buck and Planes,Trains & Automobiles because I LOVE them.

I will never fit in and I guess John Hughes, you were right, that's not such a bad thing.



Oh my god, I love this.

I Have A Teenage Daughter

"When Lucy was 4 or 5, we asked her what she wanted to try," I recalled. "Do you want to try soccer or tennis or dance? What do you want to do?," I told everyone I had probably read in a parenting magazine that it was good to empower the children and give them a voice in what activities they did. "Lucy looked right at me and she said dreamily, 'I want to learn to ride unicorns.' I was like whaaaaat?" We all laughed and laughed.

I told that story while we ate cake and celebrated Lucy turning 13. The other night we sat around the table as a family and each told a story, or two, about Lucy. It's a tradition we started on Peyton's 13th birthday. We needed a family ritual to honor the children becoming teenagers and storytelling seemed like a good one. 





Peyton told the story about Lucy saying she wanted to be "a cop" at preschool graduation. Wade and JT told stories about hanging out and playing with Lucy. Tim and I told stories about Lucy's independence and imagination and how she has always read at all the boys' games and her standing up for herself on the playground and making us laugh and more.

This is a timeline that Lucy made of her life in first grade circa 2010. She had to pick a few moments that impacted her life. She picked "helping get the president elected" in 2008. I have loved having her with me canvassing, at the rallies and protests and meetings over the years. I am glad it impacts her. I love watching her form her own opinions and beliefs about the world as she gets older.

I have a teenage daughter. That sounds weird. I feel like I just was a teenage daughter. 

My teenage daughterhood actually haunts me a bit.  It wasn't great. It was terrible actually. This is a story I didn't share the other night but it shaped who I am as a person and a mother. When I was 12 I started my period and my parents got divorced. When I was 13 I started acting out and my mother started having a mental breakdown. She and I both started drinking and smoking around then too. Three turbulent years later, both my parents lived in different states and I was living with another family trying to figure out how to grow up. It was a lot of life for both my mother and me.

Now that I have a teenage daughter of my own, I have mixed feelings. I can't imagine going through a divorce and a mental breakdown while having ego-centric/hormonal/emotional teenagers. My heart breaks for my mom and I understand her better. I understand a little more why she drank and self-medicated, not knowing the powerful and horrific genetic disposition for addiction she possessed. 

But I'm also terrified. I don't know how to have a teenage daughter.

"You are not mom," my sister texted me a couple months ago. It's a reminder I need a lot. I know I'm not. I mean I have a great marriage and a stable life. I'm not an addict. I'm not my mom. And Lucy isn't me.

Sitting at the table the other night listening to all the stories about Lucy and watching her smile and feel loved, made me so happy. Lucy is smart and kind and sensible. She loves to read. A lot. She is witty. She is quietly very brave and has very high standards. She knows she is loved. 

As we manage our way through these next few years, I will work on not taking things personally (holy shit this is so hard for me! Waaaa!) and not always expecting the worst things to happen. I will have faith in the foundation of love and stability that Tim and I  have worked so hard to build and provide our family. 

I am not my mother and Lucy is not me. Sure she'll make mistakes and so will I. But we are forging a new path of motherhood and daughterhood. Not my past, but our future. 

This is right after we gave each other makeovers (I went a little heavy on the makeup! lol) and we tried to do serious poses. Which made us laugh and laugh because we looked like some cheap poster for a creepy low-budget Lifetime movie about a tired mom and a rebellious teen. LOL.

Based on what I've read in parenting books and seen on TV and movies, it's going to be a bumpy ride but we'll get to the other side. And yes, I secretly hope we'll be best friends on the other side and tell each other everything, but trying not to put too many expectations or pressure on that. Lol.

So, hello 13. Hello having a teenage daughter. Here we goooooooo!

She's the Rory to my Lorelei. She is serious and sensible and witty. I am more immature at times than she is. 

She's got the teenage selfie/pout face/duck lip thing down.

She's a good big sister most of the time.

She and Tim are very close. She has a great father.

I love her so much.

Stormy Weather and Change and Homecoming Dances

My oldest kid went to his first high school homecoming dance this past weekend. I can't even believe it. Time is so damn weird. I mean it feels like just yesterday but at the same time a million years ago that I went to my own homecoming dance at my high school. Everything feels surreal right now not to mention exhausting, but at the same time very clear and poignant and sweet and important.

Just like in a movie, the past week's plot change was marked by winds and rain. The kind of metaphor that makes you roll your eyes in the movie because it's so obvious...stormy weather ushering in a new season, change. 

Obvious or not, after three days of constant rain and dark clouds and cold-ish wind, ch-ch-change happened. The rain stopped, the sun sort of came out and I became the parent of a kid that goes to a high school homecoming dance. Whaaaat?!?! 

Peyton went with a group of friends. He had fun. I was overwhelmed with all the people and the pictures and ahhhhh. But honestly it was all pretty cute and fun to watch.

And you know what? It's weird and I can't believe I'm so old and I don't really know what I'm doing, but I think I'm finally settling into this role of a mom of older kids. It's been a real struggle for me. Mostly because I absolutely loved having little kids. It was my jam.  But this new-ish role, these big kids that have dances to attend and football games to play and races to run and friends to hang out with and homework to stress about, well it's all pretty interesting and wild and nerve-wracking and fun.  

There was a lot of football last week per usual in this family.

It's a good thing I'm adjusting to these big kids and homecoming dances because I have a few more coming up behind Peyton. But I do need to pace myself because um, it's going to be eight years before Wade goes to his first high school homecoming dance.

We had to take a picture because having older, busier kids means it's rare for us to all be in the same spot for very long.

Saw this song pop up on a blogger's site that I love and it just felt so right on:

(click here for the video)

And duh, I said ch-ch-change, I had to post this song:

Off To High School--Round One

My son is starting high school in a couple weeks. 

Whaaaaaat? I both kind of can't believe it and feel totally okay with it. Yesterday we registered Peyton and got his schedule and got his locker. Then he had a team dinner with the football team. He seems appropriately confident and nervous. He seems ready.

Yesterday I had a talk with him that was equal parts "I Hope You Dance"/I will fucking kill you if you get messed up with drugs/grades matter/hard work matters/I will love you through all of it. He nodded while I just kept talking and talking. I have no idea if I was saying the right things or if it was too much or not enough. At one point I even admitted to eating "space cake" when I was in Amsterdam but followed up with "I was 20 and it was legal!" Ahhhhh! I stopped there because I'm not ready to tell him all the things I did or know if I even ever should. Oh hell, I have no idea! I switched gears quickly and talked about identity and threw out a Jay-Z quote because he's still cool right? Ugh. OMG. I ended with "well you get it right? I love you and I want you to have fun and know who you are and be good and be safe."

A bit cheesy? Maybe. Too much? Maybe. But god dammit I love that kid and I want him to carpe diem all the opportunities during high school. And um, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. I just want him to have a sense of self and a sense of belonging in our family and know that we have his back (but we will also hold him accountable!). 

Years ago, my much younger brother, Harrison, was visiting us right before he started high school. Peyton was two and Lucy was a baby. We had a party, with just us, to celebrate Uncle Harry going to high school. 

Balloon hats were all the rage in our little kid house at the time, so we made one for Uncle Harry. 

We also made a cake and had streamers and signs and made him wear a tie. It was cute and fun and Uncle Harry was a good sport. "Someday we'll do this for you," I told a smiley, little Peyton. "When you go off to high school, you will get a balloon hat party."

Last night it was his turn. The balloon hat tradition continued and just like his uncle, Peyton was a good sport.

It was silly, but just as important to me as the big/cheesy/heavy talk. Traditions and a sense of humor are a big part of the family he belongs to. A family that celebrates together and talks to each other and laughs together and loves through all the ups and downs and carries on silly traditions and serious traditions...that's who we are. And my god, I'm hoping that helps Peyton and each of my kids as they grow up and carpe diem the hell out of middle school and high school and jesus, adulthood. And of course make good decisions and even if they mess up, and ahhhhh, I have no idea what I'm doing! Seriously, jumping into this next phase with my fingers crossed. :)

Here's the Jay-Z quote I used (I love it and have used it before and you better believe I will use it again. I believe it.):

"Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that's the foundation for everything great."

—Jay-Z