But as soon as I felt the breezy warm evening air against my bare limbs, my whole being slowed and relaxed. Suddenly there was absolutely no rush whatsoever. Thousands of summer nights past - in a car with the windows down, sitting on cooling sand by the ocean, talking on a front porch, walking home late from a party - all quietly melted into the present moment.
Some people complain about the humidity on the East Coast. Okay, I do too; usually in late August when the whole thing is getting old. But I challenge you to complain about humidity on a June night when everything feels gentle and hushed, and the air has a pleasant comforting weight, and you are walking to the music of your flip flops slapping the cracked sidewalk and a few birds who are up too late, and the sky before you is glowing faintly behind the shadowy buildings and trees and telephone poles with the tail end of the sunset, peach and yellow, and fireflies's tiny flashes are just getting started. Then the humidity is perfection.
I thought about Frances, how she was at a party that ended at nine, how she is nearly twelve years old, how she is going on tour with her choir next week and will get on a bus with many other middle and high school students headed towards Michigan and not return for five days.
It often feels very weird that your children grow up. It also feels weird that your children aren't you. They are part of you, but so strangely and utterly separate. They think and behave and feel differently. Weird.
But lately, it hasn't really unsettled me that Frances is getting older, nor that she is herself (instead of me, or Mike, or anyone else). I notice these things. It's hard not to - what with all the independence and borrowing my clothes and responsibility and general brilliance shining all around her going on. I notice constantly. But mostly, lately, I enjoy it.
Years ago Frances asked me not to use pictures of her or write about her here - at least not without her permission. Once upon a time she inspired many, many blog posts. Now I am in the habit of composing the posts about Frances in my head, and leaving them there. But I think this one is okay (right, Frances?) because it's mostly about me, and what it has been like to mother my rising seventh grade daughter.
Yesterday morning, I went on a run. I've been feeling very plodding and lazy on my runs lately, so I brought along my phone and listened to a Spotify mix. Around mile three, when I was about ready to shift into a walk and head home, I heard the thrilling, driving drum beat that opens Rebel Girl.
That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood.
Oh man, I love that song. I let it propel me forward and fill up my mind, so that I dropped the worries I'd been carrying and simply ran.
That girl she holds her head up so high
I think I wanna be her best friend, yeah
In that open energized mental space it hit me: Frances is that girl! She's the rebel girl. Maybe this song is about my daughter.
I think I laughed out loud.
I had always identified with the singer. I admired rebel girls, usually from a safe distance. I slouched, spoke quietly, bit my nails (still do). I lacked their charismatic boldness but I seriously loved to be around it.
I've seen Frances hold her head up so high. I've seen her be assertive and generous in so many ways lately: performing, writing, with friends, in her school community. I won't say too much and risk encroaching into forbidden territory by writing directly about her. But I know as she has done the hard work of growing up in the midst of our terrifying family struggles over these past two years, I've often had moments where I stood back, puzzled, and thought, "But I would never have done/said/thought that at her age." Or "I would never have had the courage to audition for a solo." "I'd never have talked that way to an adult." "I'd never have worn that."
All true. In those moments I sometimes felt a faintly scary alienation, a mystification about this passionate girl who began her life inside me that made me nervous. I've turned to my mother and said, "I was so different at her age," and she has concurred. Sometimes I feel irrationally irritated. It can all be very weird, I tell you.
But something about Kathleen Hanna's voice took that unease and turned it into a kind of triumphant delight. Frances is different from me. I don't want to be her best friend, but I think other girls might. We all admire her forthrightness, her fast mind, her penchant for fashion.
So after the party, on the walk home through the June night, I had to tell her that I thought she was rebel girl (Mike introduced her to the song years ago). I told her about my run and how the song had struck me, how I loved her ability to say what she means, to claim her own space; how I loved her, admired her, how we were different and how that was definitely okay.
Did any of it make any sense to her? Probably not so much. I was effusing; we were both tired.
There are so many summer nights ahead for her, and most of them will be without me at her side. Frances will do so much that I have never done and never will do, in a way that is all her own. It boggles the mind. Our rebel girl is just getting started.
