fierce love

i am rethinking my thoughts about my teenager :) my daughter was my shadow, my playmate, at times my reason to keep going. she was a book worm (just like me), she was my shy violet. then....came 7th grade...

my little partner suddenly became a social butterfly. and quiet evenings with mom suddenly became a scarcity - and friends took on an urgency that i wasn't used to!...or was i?

several things in my recent past have made me wax nostalgic (the most recent of which is attending my cousin's wedding) and whenever i revisit my past, i realize how much i LOVE the characters who starred in my adolescence. to this day!!!! i carry a strong affection for the players in my adolescent drama. from friends to boyfriends - i still carry affection for them.

in my "older wisdom" i caution my daughter - your first love probably won't be your last. and that's likely true - but i warn her because i don't want her to be too attached - but i don't tell her how much i still love my first love because he was my first love. i think about my friends too - how much i loved them - how much i still do. and it is friends who have made the deepest imprint. my first (and second) true loves were my friends at the heart of it!

high school is such a strange thing. it is where we test who we want to be. and the people (male or female/ friends or lovers) who we love in HS we love FIERCELY because that's the only setting we have! and i love that i am 35 now and i can still feel the traces of the fierce love that i had for my friends.

and so i have to give my daughter a break. when her friends seem to be her world to the exclusion of the "real world" concerns i bring up - i have to remember the fierce love that accompanies teenage relationships/friendships and that that love can actually transcend time and place.
i have FIERCE love for my adolescent friends :)  which means i love you to this day! so - cass - i acknowledge your teen craziness - because i still retain some of mine :)