On Turning Eighteen

On Friday our girl turned 18.

Her deepest wish for the occasion was to have a family movie night with her father and I where we'd watch Frozen and eat Caravel ice cream cake. So that is what we did. She was thrilled, ecstatic, beside herself.

Her father and I each restrained ourselves for two hours from checking our email and Facebook feeds to check on friends and family in Paris.

There is more I could say about turning 18 and having Frozen on the top of your watch list. And more I could say about parenting a girl who is turning 18 with Frozen on the top of her watch list.

But for now I'm going to say less, holding in my heart the parents who lost children in the attacks this week in Paris, Beirut, and the continuing siege of Syria.

Jaw Dropping Question

Today our girl and I went to the dermatologist.  We're working on that ongoing challenge of adolescent acne.  But what happened in the waiting room was so unexpected that I just have ask you all about it!

I think I saw our girl flirt.  Not sure, but it sure looked like it to me.

This particular office keeps a small frig with bottled water in the waiting room for patients.  I asked my girl if she wanted one and she said sure.

When I handed her the bottle she turned to the 20-something man seated on the couch next to her and said, "Excuse me, do you think you could help me open this?"

The gentleman obliged and she thanked him and someone else had to pull my jaw up from the floor.

Is my girl flirting?  It sure looked that way to me.

Holy bejesus.  A flirting teenager.  Who'd have thought it possible?

Update: At a suitable time I asked our girl about it and she said, and I quote: "Eeek" (eyeroll) "Oh brother." So I must have read this right, no?

At Last We Are Muggles

At last we are Muggles.

Well, I suppose we have been Muggles ever since J.K. Rowling came up with the term, but we just didn't know it.

And at Autism's Edges, it's just begun.

For years our girl had too much anxiety to watch the Harry Potter films.  What with their slithering snakes, creeping giant arachnids, and swirling Dementors, they were simply too terrifying. Imagine you have a photographic, or rather videographic, memory and you're never going to be able to erase that scene of the spiders marching off by the thousands into the cavern from the Chamber of Secrets. Or that you'd be haunted by the undead who emerge from the gray waters in Voldemort's cave in the Half-Blood Prince. It was too much.

Just to keep somewhat in step with popular culture, I'd wait for the DVDs to come out and watch at night when our girl was sleeping.

I'll admit that seeing our girl so out of sync sometimes made me sad. I wanted our girl to be in step with other kids, eager to see the films, read the books, and enjoy the fantasy adventure. With the arrival of each film, it was clear that we were not even normal Muggles.

But this year, everything is different. This year, as the final film of the series was released, our girl was ready to get started with it. We've been catching up, DVD by DVD. Last night we watched the Half-Blood Prince and our girl reminded me of her amazing memory, as well as her moral sensibility.

Why do you suppose he'd do that? she asked after Draco had knocked Harry unconscious.

I don't know, I said. What do you think?

Actually, she said, I blame his father.

Why do you blame his father?

Don't you remember?  His father worked for the darkkkk lorrrd, she said, modulating her voice to reflect the creepiness of Voldemort.

Actually I hadn't remembered.  I don't remember that much from movie to movie.  The details of the world of Hogwarts elude me as I focus on other things that require my finite neural networks. But I can relax, because our girl is keeping track with her rather magical memory.  I can carry on with my muggle mind because there's some kind of magic in hers.

On a Briefly Empty Nest, or Wings Spread

Back when I was a college student -- a long, long time ago in the faraway land of Southern California -- I had to drive quite a long way to the campus where I was studying. And during those long commutes in my ancient VW, I would listen to the AM radio. I heard a lot of music that I might not otherwise have chosen: Top-Ten-type-tunes by bands like Fleetwood Mac, songs like Landslide, with a chorus that goes like this:

I've been afraid of changing

'Cause I built my life around you.

But time makes you bolder

Children get older

And I'm getting older too.

And so when I heard that tune on my Pandora Internet "Roche Sisters" radio station, I was taken back in time. And then I landed back in the the present . . . or rather the very recent past.

Last week the sweet girl went on a field trip. An overnight field trip. Well, not just an overnight field trip, but a three-days and two-nights field trip. On her own. With her classmates. Without me. Without her dad. Without us.

It was something else. Something entirely new for us. Two days without the sweet girl. We were sort of sad. The apartment felt empty without her bouncing in at 3 pm from her bus and trudging off at 7:30 in the morning, or handing over the TV remote at 8:30 in the evening with her routine announcement: "You can watch your show now -- I'm going to take a shower."

Last year when she had a field trip like this, we surreptitiously shadowed her. The school knew. And she knew. But her classmates didn't know. We called it Operation Secret Parents.

But this year, with just a little trepidation, she was ready to go it alone. In fact, I think she was readier than I was. But off she went, with her suitcase, sleeping bag, and backpack.

In the middle of the trip we got just one email, from school, saying she was having a fabulous time.

When I picked her up at school on Friday, she gathered together her stuff -- suitcase, sleeping bag, backpack -- turned around to her classmates, and said, with perfect preteen inflection: "Uh, later guys."

Several called out, "Bye, M___. Have a great weekend, M____."

She hasn't said too much about the trip. They picked apples and made apple cider. They went on a long, long hike all the way to a waterfall. And among her favorite things: this bird expert, who showed the kids a falcon and an owl. She told me he even brought a dead mouse, and fed it to the owl.

"Was that gross?" I asked.

"No," she exclaimed, "It was so cool. And there was a snake man, too. He had a huge yellow snake. It was so big that two people had to carry it in. It was shedding. And we got to pet it! Its skin was so dry."

So things do change. Skins are shed, wings are spread. And she's definitely grown bolder . . . even if I've only grown older.