A crash course in teen parenting

Dear Readers,

As I write my column this month, I’m sitting at my patio table in the early chill of a spring morning. I can only write when I’m alone, and today this is the only quiet corner of my universe. I am so far behind that the rest of the magazine is already at the printer, waiting for this last addition.

As I shared a few months back, I am marrying a man with four children, three of them teenage girls. Until March of this year, my only child was a third grade boy and the rest of our tribe’s kids ranged in age from 2 to 11. I was still enrolled in Parenting 101: instilling values and a work ethic, providing emotional safety and stability, helping with homework and prioritizing quality time.

Given this, I feel grossly under-prepared for my new parenting life. I am now a step-mom, which comes with the inherent complexities of who I am to the kids and where our boundaries lay, plus the myriad dramas that sometimes seem to dominate our lives. A few weeks ago it was the 15-year-old wanting her upper ear pierced. Last week it was the soon-to-be 13-year-old lobbying for a cell phone (and a car) for her birthday. This weekend, it was a matter of life and death.

On Saturday, my fiancé and I were on our first real date in months, the younger children all safely occupied for the evening and the oldest, 17 year-old Alex, two hours north with a friend, interviewing the Amish for her senior final project. Michael had left his phone in the car, and as we got in after dinner it was ringing. It was Alex’s number, but it wasn’t Alex on the line. Her friend, a boy, had made the call, and he was clearly upset. From the passenger seat I could hear shouted fragments of his side of the exchange.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gull, I’m so sorry!”

“The car flipped over three times…”

“I got Alex out but the paramedic needs to talk to you…”

And again, “I’m so sorry.”

Michael laid his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment while the boy gave the phone to the paramedic. I could feel the blood chilling in Michael’s veins as his face turned to ash. Finally, we were informed that our daughter had sustained “a crushing injury” to her hand, a laceration of unknown severity to her foot and that further examination was needed at a hospital in Fond du Lac, over an hour from where we were.

“Who’s screaming?” asked Michael.

“That’s your daughter, sir, she’s pretty shaken up,” replied the paramedic.

“Give her the phone, let me talk to her!” Michael’s voice was shaking, and as I write, I am reliving the panic we both felt in that moment.

“Oh, Daddy, we tried to stop but we couldn’t and the car flipped over and over and over and I thought I was dead I really thought I was going to die and I’m so scared!” There were more words between racking sobs, but I couldn’t hear well from my seat and didn’t ask him to repeat them.

“It’s okay, baby. We’re on the way. We’ll be there soon. Don’t worry.”

The next six hours are burned in my mind, though somehow blurry around the edges, like Vaseline smeared on the lens of stark memory: picking up Alex’s mom; the three of us making the interminable drive to Fond du Lac; the calls along the way: updates from the (uninjured) boy; to and from Alex’s best friend, whose new car they had borrowed for the trip; and from her best friend’s father, at first furious about the car but ultimately grateful for the safety of the children. At the hospital, trying to figure out how much to participate and how much to fade back. The much shorter-seeming drive home with Alex leaning on her mom’s shoulder in the back seat, the Beatles playing quietly to keep me awake behind the wheel.

Alex is home now, convalescing in my attic office with flowers, stuffed animals and family and friends. She missed her last day of high school today, but will see her first day of college this fall. She is still in pain, but will be up and around soon. There are police reports and insurance claims and medical follow-ups and at least a summer’s worth of details to sort out when there were already so many others in queue, but it’s okay. We lived through that indescribable moment of not knowing, of facing the possibility that one of our children had gone before us. We survived that and came through together – all of us – Alex’s dad and mom and me. The next several months promise to be a giant pain in our asses, but we’ve been graced to have our souls left intact.

Suddenly, everything seems easy.

Peace,
Jon Anne