Thirteen

My eldest girl has just turned thirteen.

I was once - a long time ago admittedly - thirteen so you would think it would seem somewhat familiar to me, but in fact somedays she seems like an alien. A willowy, beautifully dressed alien, but still an alien.

Her world revolves around her friends, her clothes and her phone. They exist in such a symbiotic relationship that if you took any one of those away she would probably say she would be unable to function. I was much the same at that age, although I'm sure my life contained a lot more angst. I remember school discos and the planning and discussions that went into them, the 'getting ready' at whoever's house we had decided to gather for the evening, where two or more hours would be spent teasing and backcombing our hair into some sort of party piece, squeezing ourselves into party clothes and applying so much make up that I wonder how our eyes or mouths actually moved on our faces. There would be long discussions about who fancied who and who had fallen out with who that week. We discussed every boy in the senior years and wondered who would be coming to the dance. There was the hope that humiliation would not be part of our evening.

If my daughter and her friends have the same levels of worry, I don't hear about it. There is more texting and less hushed conversations on the phone than I attempted as a teen, so maybe that is why. But perhaps because of that, her life and what is important at that age still seems like a bit of a mystery to me. So I hang about on the sidelines, ready for her to talk if she needs me but otherwise feeling like a bit of a spare part, a bit frumpy, a bit out of touch, a bit old.

Which, from a teenager's point of view, is just how it should be.

Why I have started a blog

Inspired by my friend Ella at notes from home who has been a blogger for what seems like forever I am finally getting around to starting a blog. I am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, godmother, cook, laundrymaid and employee. I have four children, one of whom died aged one leaving a huge hole in our lives. We muddle through, making the most of each day grateful for the love we have for each other. I like to write and I hope that I will be able to do that here in my little corner of the internet.