Heather and I rarely get a chance to go shopping together. It's not an activity I enjoy just because I don't much care for the in-store experience. But with a growing teen it's frequently necessary to replace clothing that just doesn't work any more. But where to fit that kind of activity into the schedule? It's hard. But we did take some time today to look for a few things. It was fun to do this with her.
During our excursion she told me that she observes among some of her girlfriends a real friction with their mothers. We talked a little about what it takes to have a good relationship with anyone, let alone with ones mom. How the responsibility for that relationship falls on both people. And we mused on the peer pressure that makes some girls who would otherwise love to be with their moms disdain them because that's how all their other girlfriends treat their moms.
Sometimes personalities in a family just don't mesh. Sometimes they run afoul of the pressures from outside. We're lucky. We've always believed that the relationship between all three of us was more important than just about anything else. And it shows now when Heather is moving into the strange vortex of adolescence. I'm so very pleased that she still wants to be with me. I'm not naive to think there will never be a moment in which she isn't just a little embarrassed by her frumpy, clueless mother. However I'm pretty confident that she respects me enough not to let me know when that moment happens, at least not until it's long gone.
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