If You Touch Her Heart

Teenage love is hard the second time around.

If you consult my teen, she’ll tell you that in my advanced age I may be smart enough to know better, but now I’m way too old to be useful.  To my daughter, I have lived no previous life.  To her I’ve always been mom and somewhat roundish.  Certainly was I never young or romantic.  Predictable and monotonous, those are the sleek adjectives she would use to describe me.

As matronly as I am today, I can still remember just how flawed teenage boys can be.  In essence, all teen boys, regardless of their current chronological age, are connected.  Their traits are as timeless as the reasoning they use to advance their cause.  In short, no teenage boy should be allowed to date.  Most especially, no teenage boy should be allowed to date my daughter.

When Mayle’s first boyfriend went away to college, he dumped her almost as soon as the soles of his Converse shoes hit the Berklee campus.

“That bastard ate all those cookies you baked for him!” John had sensitively pointed out between bites of the leftovers. “And then he dumped her!”

Regardless of the parental support and empathetic heartbreak she received, Mayle managed to survive her first fractured romance, and successfully went on to have a few more ex-boyfriends.

But the tale of Stancey’s first boyfriend is still in a state of flux.  Since college for both is still a few years off, the on-again/off-again cycle of their romance is likely to affect our household for the next few years.

When they’re on—it’s bliss. 

When they’re off—someone’s going to get punched.

Comically, of all the boys that have entered and exited our life, it’s this particular boyfriend that John really likes.  While most fathers would be less than pleased to find their daughter’s boyfriend sleeping in the shed behind the house, John chose to view it as an asset and invited him to go camping with us last summer. 

And when they broke up the first time this past fall, John quickly jumped to side of the ex. 

“Do you think maybe it’s her attitude?”  He had sensitively pointed as he munched on some cookies.

I don’t know what exactly changed John’s mind after their most recent break-up.  Maybe it was the text message I sent him last week when he was in D.C., describing the hickey that had been branded on his sweet baby girl’s neck. 

My theory is that once teenage terrors become fathers, they suddenly understand just how terrible they were. You see, a mother will never forget, and a father will suddenly become conscience stricken. 

What bothers me more than the hickey on her neck is the hickey on her heart.  That’s a brand she will bare the rest of her life.  As her mother, I know that her first love will prepare her for her forever love.  Just as mine led me to John. 

Young love, in its idealistic state, is about touching someone’s heart.

Grown-up love, in its realistic state, is about touching someone else’s dirty underwear. 

Regardless of where you stand in the love/age continuum, both places equally stink.  But having lived through the former, I’ll take smelly underwear any day.