I found myself restraining my daughter tonight as she attempted to hit her father with a tennis racquet. I was worried about his safety. She's got a very good backhand.
It's not easy restraining a furiously angry twelve-year old. I stood behind her and encircled her with hopefully loving arms and tried to make soothing sounds. Making soothing sounds was difficult. I was struggling to find the right words to say whilst she was twisting and shouting "I hate you and I wish you were dead."
"Well I'm sorry about that because I love you" is the sort of response one gives to toddlers, isn't it? Not that she ever said that when she was a toddler. I settled for the shorter "Well we love you". Except I couldn't quite finish the sentence. Face distorted with tears of rage, she sank her teeth into my arm and bit down hard. The "you" turned into a caterwauled "yeOW".
This is what happens when you try to separate an overtired almost-teenager from her laptop at 10.30. Or rather this is what happened to us. There is a point at which the roads diverged and we took the wrong path somewhere.
Sobbing hours later, hours of talking, she allowed me to usher her up to bed. Of course I wanted to kiss the tears away but that's not allowed any more. At one point, I told her how beautiful she is. I got a terse negative. The marvel of her. Long colt-like limbs, heart-shaped face, huge eyes, glossy hair. And the self-doubt, the anger, the need to assert independence. There's a whole new emotional vocabulary for teenage kicks.
We'll go into town tomorrow. I've promised frothy milky coffee and steaming hot chocolate. She wants to find a book and I want to find my daughter. I hope Waterstones has what we need in stock.
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