Aqua Summer

Photo @madeleinediaries

Last summer, seemingly overnight, my daughter became a teenager, and I was not prepared. Sure, there had been a few warning signs over the course of the year. Some time spent in the morning in front of my bedroom’s closet mirror, trying on different outfits within the limited range of her school’s white and grey dress code. A timid and later frank encouragement to be dropped off at the street corner rather than in front of the school doors. Less than enthusiastic reactions to our family outing proposals. Sunday brunch followed by a museum? Dinner and a movie in an actual movie theater on a Friday night? A hike in the woods like we used to do during the Covid lockdown (not that she was ever fully enthusiastic about those, to be perfectly transparent)? Thank you but no thank you.

My daughter was only in fifth grade, however, and I thought, as a naïve first-time mother of a girl, that I still had a few years before she became a real teenager, whatever that meant in my mind. After all, her brother was almost fourteen and not displaying many signs of rebellious yearnings for independence. The pandemic might have been partly responsible for this, as he spent half of sixth grade and most of seventh grade at home on a computer screen, with limited forays into the outside world (don’t even get me started on New York City’s schooling situation in the academic year of 2020-2021). Whatever the reason, he was still fairly dependent on us and eager to please, rarely objecting to our family plans. So, I naturally expected that his sister would follow the same path, and that we still had at least a couple of years of sweet, compliant girlhood ahead of us. But my daughter - who, come to think of it, was never quite that flowery, obedient child I now reconstruct in my mind, - evidently had other plans. Or maybe Mother Nature had other plans for her. Whoever was responsible for this turn of events, a few weeks before she turned eleven, something started shifting in our house. Getting out of the shower suddenly became a loud, dramatic event involving frantic draping of towels and mad dashes back to the bedroom, claiming that we “couldn’t look”. Training bras were acquired after much fretting on the right shape and color. Doors started being slammed. Mentions of parental incompetence and overall stupidity were made. Yelling was heard throughout the house, immediately followed by cuddles with the tattered pink bunny given as a birth present and never abandoned ever since. Needless to say, I was completely lost.

My only experience of girl teenagehood was my own, which is to say, quite limited and possibly warped. I went through puberty very late and remained a timid, hardworking girl who was literally terrified of boys until I was about eighteen. I was afraid of my mother and never dared challenge her fashion rules until they became truly unmanageable - a Peter Pan white collar and pink velvet headband were never going to make it past seventh grade even in the best-case scenario. However, even when my mom relented and started acquiring some of the clothing attributes I deemed essential to my social survival, my shyness did not follow suit and I remained a quiet girl who was happy with a small group of friends and wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. So, when I see my daughter systematically reaching for the shortest pair of shorts in her collection and debating for hours over how unfair it is that she is not allowed to show her belly button at school, I have to say that I just truly do not understand. When she starts crying and yelling that I do not understand and that it will be too embarrassing to have her birthday party at our house, when it is what she specifically requested the week before, I look at her in disbelief and wonder why she didn’t wait until she was fourteen to adopt this incomprehensible behavior. This was not the calendar she was supposed to follow, and my inner motherly navigation system was thoroughly unprepared for the unannounced disruption. Sometimes I feel raw anger and resentment at this state of affairs and I have been caught yelling more often that I would care to admit, mirroring the very emotional chaos I find so unnerving. But other times, like last week when her father was out of town and her older brother on a school trip, allowing for more space, maybe, in a house full of male energy, my daughter will surprise me in the most delicious and unexpected manner. And that time it was around a glass of tea. I say a glass because it being June and already quite hot in Paris, I have switched my afternoon post-school herbal tea ritual to a more climate-appropriate herbal iced tea ceremony. Meaning, I still plop down on the kitchen stool, feeling all the weight of my motherly evening responsibilities and bracing myself for the next two to three hours of homework struggles, raucous bath splashing, frantic oven checking and general household chaos. But instead of a hot mug of mint and licorice-infused beverage, I slowly sip a fruity concoction that right now happens to be something called Aqua Summer, by the renowned and reliable Kusmi Tea. I usually will not have more tea after dinner, but one evening last week, since my husband was away and I found myself having no assistance of any kind to put down my two little boys down for the night, I needed another refuel after deciding to open the bottle of Prosecco that had been lying around in our fridge for months. It had been a long night and I was finally sitting alone in my kitchen, after my sons had seemingly decided to admit defeat and fall asleep. I was staring into nothingness and mentally listing the last few steps separating me from collapsing into my bed when I heard light footsteps behind me. It was my daughter in her mismatched rainbow shorts and Nashville t-shirt improvised pajamas, and she had a smile on her face. “Mommy, I’m going to have some iced tea, would you like some?” she said. And without waiting for my answer, she proceeded to grab the glass bottle from the narrow fridge door (how few bottles I can fit in my French refrigerator is a major pet peeve of mine since moving back from the U.S., but totally another story), and to swiftly grab two glasses from the drying rack by the sink. She sat down next to me without a word, and we silently sipped our Aqua Summer, shyly glancing at each other and absorbing this moment of quiet after the battles of the week. Then my daughter just said, “good night, mommy”, kissed me on the hair and was gone. I was left by myself and suddenly fighting back tears, wanting to hug her and tell her I loved her. But I stayed there in my kitchen, simply enjoying this moment of reprieve and telling myself my daughter’s early teenage years were a gift I still had to fully open. I know the battles and the frustration and sometimes the sheer inner rage, will be back tomorrow. But for now, I decided to enjoy the sweetness of my soon-to-be twelve-year-old girl and this peach-flavored tea that tastes just like the early days of Summer.