Roll Your Eyes at Me? Why, Thank You For The Compliment

I have decided that eye-rolling is the highest form of compliment.  

It’s a good thing I believe this, because I have a 13-year-old daughter, and she’s really good at it.   I get lots of compliments.

 

Eye-rolling has taken the place of the mutual admiration society we had going when she was 4. Then, I was the prettiest mommy, the best cook, a great fixer, and most awesomest boo-boo kisser.   She loved me because of who she knew me to be.  I was an ever-reliable source of food, safety and comfort.

The same holds true now, even if she would never admit it.  The eyes roll because I annoy the crap (don’t say “crap”!) out of her.  But I am still the ever-reliable source of, you guessed it—food, safety and comfort.

This all became crystal clear for me on Mother’s Day when I gave myself permission to indicate what I wanted to do without consideration of everyone else’s desires.  And there were two movies I wanted to see—neither of which was a teen romance (for Lex) or a shoot-em-up action movie (for the hubs).

“Well, which movies?” she asked.

“I want to see ‘Heaven is for Real’ or ‘God’s Not Dead’. ”

As soon as I named them, my daughter…..rolled her eyes.  “Of course you do.”

See?  A compliment.

The character trait I deplore most in the world is hypocrisy. The fact that Lex views my movie choices as consistent with my faith and the standard to which I hold her shows that I am meeting my goal.  I have reliable and consistent standards on which she can depend while she goes about the business of developing her own.

The interaction got me thinking about other things she holds true about me.

Like I love her dad, and we come as a set until one of us dies. Sometimes it’s fun to have a prolonged hello kiss in the kitchen just to hear how grossed out she gets.

Like we are the strictest parents in town.  This one is not as much fun as she believes, because it really stinks to know she is probably telling the truth when she regales us with all the stuff other kids are allowed to do and she is not….use her i-phone or the internet after 9:30 pm, stay at Old Settlers Days past 11 pm,  spend the night at a friend’s house when I don’t know her parents.

Like how much I love her.

I believe that all parents love their children and do the best they can for them, even when their “best” really isn’t very good.

My “best” is that Lex knows, as part of the essence of who she is, that she is loved.

Once accomplished, she can decide who she is from there.  My love doesn’t depend on her academic success, although she’s had a fair bit of that. It doesn’t depend on her athletic prowess, although she has that too.  It doesn’t depend on her beauty, her personality or her giving nature.

I love her because she exists.

And on some level, she knows this.

My job as a mom is to keep her safe, love her, and give her the base she needs to go forth into the world in any way she chooses.

So I can handle the eye-rolling,  read “here she goes again” because well, there I go again.