Published in Woman's Day, May 2011

You wish you could spare her every hurt, but letting go is part of the art of mothering.The doorbell rings. Standing on the porch, studying his shoes as if he were going to be tested on them, is my daughter’s boyfriend. Her first boyfriend. My daughter is 13. The boy, also an eighth-grader, has come to give her a present.Their texting-in-class-under-the-desk relationship is a month old— which is to say ancient in the world of middle school romances. “I’m in love,” she told me the other day. Then, quickly catching herself, she added, “You wouldn’t understand.”Of course I would understand. I was once 13 and in love. I grabbed her hand and began telling her about my first boyfriend. I wanted her to know that I was not clueless—in fact, just the opposite. But I became so involved in telling my story that I missed the exact moment her eyes began to glaze over. She pulled her hand away, sighing. This I couldn’t miss. She had stopped listening.I’d come face-to-face with one of the many lessons that mothering a teen is in the process of teaching me: It’s OK to remember, but it is not OK to reminisce. At length. As fascinating as I might think my life was, my daughter, I have to keep reminding myself, is in the midst of her own life—and not particularly interested in my decades-old recollections. Yet that shouldn’t stop me from remembering, because remembering helps me understand her.Outside, on the porch, the boyfriend hands her a small box. She blushes when she opens it. Inside is a little locket. She scoops up her hair, and I fasten the clasp at the back of her neck.Two days later, she’s still wearing it when he breaks up with her on the phone. I listen to the long silences, to the little catch in her voice when she says, “Fine…if that’s the way you want it.”My heart is breaking. I wish I could spare her all the hurt and disappointment—the little ones she’ll soon forget and the big ones she’ll always remember.I knock on my daughter’s door. She yells at me to go away, just as I yelled at my mother when my boyfriend broke up with me. With great effort, I restrain myself from barging in anyway. But an hour later, when she still hasn’t emerged, I knock again, entering before she has time to warn me off. Her eyes are red, her face swollen from crying. She allows me to sit on the bed next to her.“You know,” I say softly, “boys are less mature than girls.” She sniffles. “I’m glad you had a boyfriend. But you don’t need one, sweetie. You are a whole person all by yourself.”The sniffle turns into a snort. She gives me one of those patented teengirl get out of my lifelooks. And here I am, again, face-to-face with another of those lessons I apparently need to keep learning: Every moment is not a teaching moment. At this moment, for example, I should be listening and consoling, not launching into a lecture on self-esteem.“Sorry,” I say. She sighs, and her look softens a bit. We sit in silence for a long moment. I’m hoping that she will want to talk about this later, on her own terms. I need to allow her that opportunity, which means I need to butt out. This is perhaps the hardest part of mothering: letting your child make her own way, fall, pick herself up and keep going.Two days after the breakup, at the dinner table, my daughter looks up from her plate and shakes her head. “Ya know what?” she says suddenly. “I didn’t realize what a jerk that guy was.” My husband and I know what guy she’s talking about. I nod and, with herculean effort, keep my mouth shut. “I mean, it hurt a lot until I realized what a jerk he was.” I nod again and offer a tentative smile. She goes back to her spaghetti. Then, a moment later, she grins at me.“Mom, I gotta tell you about this guy in my band class…”