I Take it Back!

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I take back every judgment I made about mothers of teenagers before I had one.

“How can this be? How can she want to do this?” I asked myself after a sleepless night. My 14-year-old woman/ child has told me she needs birth control. I understand why she wants to have sex with a 16-year-old boy, but I don’t understand how she got to this place in her thinking, at this age.

“I did everything right!” I wail. The early pre-dawn fall light hides my tears (maybe), as I take her to be picked up by a big yellow school bus. It is grossly incongruous. My child who wants to have sex cannot even drive. She is not allowed to date, so how can she have sex?

“Where will you consummate this? You can only see him at school. I don’t want you to do this on some dirty mattress or standing in an alley some place. I don’t want you to do this at all! I know you care for each other, but some things in life you have to wait for,” I say to her, hoping good ideas will penetrate her thoughts. “You are not meant to have an adult expression of love and commitment at your age,” because you are a child is what I really want to say. I worry about the terrible angst and possible desolation of spirit for her when the inevitable occurs.

I note the childish tone in my protests for only a second. It is too appalling that she wants to have sex with a boy who has a man’s working anatomical parts but not a man’s wisdom and caring, let alone a job or a car. Part of me wants to protest that she won’t even enjoy it because he will finish with her way too quickly for her to enjoy anything. What am I thinking? I don’t want her to enjoy it! I want her to be disappointed! No, that’s not true either. What I really want is that neither of us should be thinking about any of this. She still sleeps with stuffed animals. How can she be ready for sex?

Again, I make a mental list of what I’ve taught my daughter to help her avoid this very dilemma. We live a spiritually-based life, praise her accomplishments and have had frank discussions about sex and the advantages of waiting for it. In the end, I know those common-sense things matter, but they still have not steered her away from this.