Just a Hole Punch

Throughout my accounts of parenting, it may often appear that I think I know exactly what I’m doing.  That’s a façade.  I don’t.  I’m no fool, though.  I prefer to share the stories of success.  That’s human nature…a parent’s nature, isn’t it? Today’s parenting blog is about the choosing of battles.  It’s probably the foundation that I built my parenting strategies on.  I…choose….my….battles.  I have for years.  I fight the most important ones and I let the other “fights” go. After all, I’ve raised (and am still raising) two sassy, strong-willed girls.  I often wonder where they get that from (hmph). Make up, for example, is not worthy of battling. When my eldest daughter was thirteen she decided she wanted to wear eye shadow.  I mean she wanted to reeeeeally wear it.  We shopped, she picked out and I purchased eye shadow.  She later came out ready to conquer the world with purple, several shades of purple, eye shadow from her eye lashes up to her eye brows.  She looked like she was having an allergic reaction to blackberries. I didn’t say a word.  Not a word.  A few years later, she came across a picture that had captured her purple shadow days.  She looked over at me, aghast.  “Mom,” she whined, “WHY would you let me go out of the house like that?”  I just giggled.  Lesson learned, phase passed, giggle earned. So, recently, when my youngest daughter wanted to pierce her conch (look it up, I had to), I weighed the effects, the good consequences, the bad consequences and all of the reasons I wanted to say no. What if she regretted it?  What if it hurt like Hell?  What if people judged her?  So, I tapped into my mom voice and began listing my reservations.  She listened.  For good measure. I said she’d have to pay for it, herself, with her own money.  I said she’d have to take care of it, herself.  I said she couldn’t swim the rest of the summer.  I said she may regret it later in life.  However, I did not say no.  She listened to my reservations, she contemplated (as much as a seventeen year old contemplates) and she stood convicted.  I mean, who is surprised?  She IS my daughter.  She wanted the piercing. Standing before me was my sweet baby girl; the baby that I couldn’t watch get shots when she was an infant or a toddler or even a ten year old.  And she wanted me to not only sign for her to get a hole punched in her ear, she wanted me to go along.  She’s a straight A student, I told myself.  She doesn’t sneak out, or do drugs with her friends and she isn’t pregnant. Why can’t she get a hole punched in her conch.  Well, I decided, she can.  Silently, I freaked out at the prospect of some stranger punching a hole in my daughter’s ear.  I cleaned house like a crazy woman (it’s what I do), I took too long getting ready (hahaha, to go to a piercing ‘salon’), I dug out an old bottle of Xanax and off we went.  We arrived at the ‘salon’ and I was, first, shocked and second, ashamed.  I was ashamed because I realized I’d had a stereotypical expectation of what a piercing salon and what piercist (Is that a word?  You get the picture.) would/should look like. Shame on me. The place was appropriately named Immaculate.  It was, in fact, immaculate.  The glass jewelry cases were immaculate.  The floor was immaculate.  The couch in the waiting area was leather and was, also, immaculate.  I had to show my driver’s license, her birth certificate and a copy of my divorce decree verifying that I am, in fact, her custodial parent. The receptionist was knowledgeable and thorough. The piercist (I like the word, even if I made it up) was professional.  The tools were sterile, opened in front of us. The room was more sterile than many doctor’s offices I’ve been in.  The piercist explained each step.  He was gentle and the piercing was completed without a hiccup.  My daughter, my beautiful baby girl, stood in front of the mirror grinning from ear to ear.  “I’m in love,” she declared.  And she was.  “So am I,” I thought, “I have been since the day I met you. You’re beautiful to me, even with a hole punched in your ear.”  I couldn’t say that out loud, of course, because I was concentrating on NOT fainting. Battle not chosen. No regrets.