ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 1996 TAG: 9604100010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
The other night at a play, I ran into a woman I know.
When I'd last seen her two years ago, we talked about our children. Her son, a ninth-grader at the time, was excelling at his new school, she'd told me, beaming.
My son, a colicky infant at the time, was excelling at screaming - particularly at 3 a.m. ``Just wait till he's 2,'' she'd said. ``Terrible 2.''
Now I have a 2-year-old, I told her, and he's terrific.
Now she has a 16-year-old, she replied, and he's terrible.
It's a familiar refrain among parents of adolescents: ``Just wait till he's a teen-ager,'' they moan.
They make adolescence sound like a life-threatening condition. They make raising adolescents sound even worse.
My friend Regina, who has single-handedly raised her 18-year-old daughter, describes the journey this way: ``My goal was always to get her through high school - without her getting pregnant, or getting in a car accident, or getting AIDS.
``It's exactly like walking through a mine field,'' she says. ``There's no road map to guide you around the danger spots. You just hope you make it through to the other side.''
Some teen-agers never make it. They lose an arm or die. Most escape with just a few scars.
Do you remember what it was like to be a teen-ager - to push your parents away one moment, then cry for them the next? The terrible loneliness. Your body doing funky things. Adults dismissing you as bratty and rebellious; preaching the need to act ``mature'' ... only you can't vote, you don't have a car, and nobody seems to respect what you have to say.
More than anything, you're scared. Finding your place in the world is frightening, especially when the ground keeps moving under your feet.
A Roanoke woman called me recently; I'll call her Ann. She wanted a favor I couldn't oblige - a backstage press pass for an upcoming grunge concert her daughter wanted to attend.
More than anything, she wanted to tell her story. ``I remember when you had your baby,'' she said. ``I was so happy for you. But I have to tell you - there are so many unforeseen things.
``You have to be very wary, very vigilant.''
Ann wants to take you on a tour of her own personal mine field, a journey that began when she gave birth to her daughter - I'll call her April - more than 16 years ago.
Divorced when April was 2, Ann has witnessed so many explosions along the harrowing terrain: childhood illnesses including epilepsy and gastroenteritis, learning problems in school, an obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic depression.
Her daughter started taking Prozac at age 13. Shortly after, she began staying up all night watching MTV ``and I couldn't get her to quit.'' The next year, two people her daughter identified strongly with - her aunt and singer Kurt Cobain - committed suicide.
``I had no idea she even knew him that well,'' Ann says of Cobain, who was lead singer for the band Nirvana. ``But then she just became obsessed.''
Soon after, in the middle of an argument, April told her mother: ``I'm gonna kill myself.''
``She was sitting on my dead sister's bed, sitting across from a poster of a dead rock star, and telling me she hated me. And I thought, `How is it that this 27-year-old guy who blew his brains out after using drugs means everything to her, and I mean nothing?'''
In the past two years, April has been hospitalized twice for suicide attempts. She's been through several counseling programs, been suspended twice from school for violent behavior, and been in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for assaulting her mother.
A judge ordered her to stay out of trouble, ``but she has no parole officer or anyone who checks on her.'' Police and psychiatric nurses instructed Ann to ``hit her back'' the next time April strikes her, ``but I can't think of it.'' She's tried to get in-home counseling, but says she was turned down for lack of funds.
Her daughter's only lifeline, she's come to realize, is grunge-rock music and her alternative-lifestyle friends. And though Ann doesn't approve of either, she's afraid if she pulls the plug her daughter will run away. Or worse.
There was a time when Ann still clung to the dream of her daughter attending college. Now she holds on to the little things, like April teaching herself to play guitar - by watching slow-motion videotapes of Kurt Cobain.
Now she believes it's enough for April ``just to be alive.''
``She's very creative,'' Ann says. ``She's so special. But the world is so skewed, so warped. I can't help wondering, where did it go?''
So, Ann continues holding her daughter's hand - but not very tightly - as they tiptoe through this treacherous mine field called the teen-age years.
And sometimes she lets go, closes her eyes, and prays only for the sound of footsteps.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 linesby CNB