Love Hurts, High School Style

Most of last week, I was in Las Vegas on a project, but every time I spoke to Sisi by phone, I got an earful about "The Boy I Like"-- hereinafter referred to "B" for "boy"--to protect his privacy. Of course, there's no way in hell any of Sisi's friends would EVER do something as lame as read her mother's blog, but it is the Internet and I guess you never know. I wouldn't want to ruin my daughter's social life by revealing too much...

(Can you tell by the emphasis in the last two sentences who I've been talking to about this? Oh, the limits of the black and white thinking of as teenager! Pun intended!)

Just before I left town last week, Sisi was trying to decide if she was going to Homecoming. Tickets were on sale, and most of her friends weren't going. They are, after all, lowly freshmen and not as fully invested in the school as the upperclassmen.

On Friday afternoon, when I had a break from my work, I called home and was greeted with an enthusiastic: "I've been waiting all day to tell someone this news!" I wish Sisi got excited about getting an "A" on a project, but I knew better. This had to be about "the boy she likes."

"B asked me to Homecoming!" she gushed. "So I'll need a dress, and shoes, and a hairdo and..."

"Slow your roll," I said. "You're not Homecoming Queen. Take it easy here."

Let the negotiations begin!

We decided she'd get a new dress, borrow a pair of my fancy heels, style her hair herself and buy some inexpensive jewelry or a sparkly barrette or other hair ornament. Budget $100.

Because I was away, Kevin got the dress-selecting job. It's one of those things that if you'd told him six or seven years ago that he'd be doing on a Sunday afternoon, he'd have laughed, but there he was patiently sifting through cocktail dresses in the Juniors department of Macy's, doing his best to keep his step-daughter classy and not trashy-- with some brief guidelines from me. No strapless, not more than two inches above the knee, please. They found an adorable dress on-budget and sent me a picture.

Good. Sisi was bubbling with excitement. Her first Homecoming--- and her first real date!

I got home on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, our house was full of the usual cadre of girls. "This is my dress," I heard her telling them as passed by her room. "With these shoes... and I'm thinking of twisting my hair like this..."

But by Thursday the picture had changed.

"He dumped me," she said when I met her after school. Her eyes filled with tears. "He said he didn't think it would work out and he'd rather be 'just friends'. He's taking someone else."

Of course, she was hurt. But we had a good talk. About how there are plenty of fish in the sea. About how "B" may have done her favor by breaking it off. About why it would be stupid to try to chase after him-- and smarter to act like you just don't care.

"You've got a beautiful dress. You could go anyway with a group of friends," I suggested.

"But none of my friends were going," she told me. "I don't want to go if I don't have anyone to hang out with."

I started looking for the receipt for the dress.

So, here we are. Homecoming was tonight...but Sisi didn't go. We returned the dress this afternoon, and instead, she and her friends held an "anti-Homecoming" party, playing board games and eating pizza. They had a blast. If she's thought about "B" at all, I can't tell. She's seems perfectly content with her friends, her games, her music and her pizza.

Heartache healed...for now. This one was easy: she liked this boy, but it wasn't "love," thank goodness.

First love, however, is coming. My next door neighbor's son just graduated from the same high school... and is marrying his girlfriend next month before joining the Air Force. "They've been dating since freshman year," she told me. "She's his first real girlfriend. He's always made good decisions and never given us a minute's worry..." she sighed. "But they're both so young. This wasn't in my plan for him. None of it."

Or Sisi's friend who breaks up with her 15-year-old boyfriend once a week... and threatens to kill herself every time. She doesn't; it's mostly drama. But it's still scary to hear and has caused Sisi and the girl's family considerable distress.

Not in the plan, either.

Love is coming...and heartbreak is coming, too, the kind pizza and Wii don't cure. I hate the thought of it, but there's nothing I can do. It comes to us all, it some point. It's one of the experiences that leads us into maturity.

I can only hope Sisi shows the same resilience and flexibility she has over this incident when love and heartbreak come. I can hope... but love, like so many things, has it own plans.

Feeding Frenzy: Sisi goes Vegan, no, Vegetarian, well Pescatarian...or something

My daughter Sisi is without a doubt the star of this blog... and it's time for an update into her latest foray into defining herself. We've already explored hair, makeup, contact lenses and wardrobe. What else could there be?

Diet, of course. Food, marvelous food.

Saturday morning, Sisi announced, "I've decided to become a vegan" and waited expectantly for a reaction. I've learned from hard experience that, when a reaction is "expected," it's best not to react at all. So I turned a page of the newspaper I was reading and simply said, "Okay."

"It's because I watched a video on YouTube. About animal cruelty in slaughterhouses. You want to see it?"

I already know all about it. Not so much because of YouTube, but because of Michael Pollan's excellent books, In Defense of Food, and The Onmivore's Delimma.



Pollan's eater's manifesto is simply this: "Eat food (not processed stuff), not too much, mostly plants."

Concerns about where food comes from is not new in this household. We've had a garden, frequent farmer's markets and try to buy both locally and organically raised meats. While the treatment of the animals is important, my concern has always been about the multitude of contamination streams that come with Big Food. If you've read either of Pollan's books, you know what I mean. If you haven't, you should.

My efforts at buying, cooking and serving "clean" food are the reasons that every chance she gets, Sisi begs for fast food: she's usually the first one in the household to complain about our healthy foods. I have to nag her to eat fruit. She complains that my chicken isn't "real chicken": the stuff they serve at McDonald's is "real chicken." And vegetables? Please.

I opted not to watch the YouTube video, and instead, answered her question with a question of my own:

"You do know that vegans eat mostly vegetables, right? They don't even eat eggs, or milk-- or anything that is made with them, which includes a lot of baked stuff."

Sisi frowned. "Well, you can take me to the store, and we can by some stuff especially for vegans. You know, like the mock chicken, and vegan breads and cookies and other stuff I could eat."

I tossed her a fresh peach, picked from a local farm only the day before. "That could get kind of expensive and some of those products aren't that good for you either. We'll see. For right now, here's something you can eat."

I don't know why, but she didn't seem so happy with that. But she took the peach and went back to her room. She came back an hour later with a new announcement.

"I don't think I'm going to go vegan after all," she said heading for the kitchen cabinet for a box of Ritz crackers. "I'll just be a vegetarian. That means I can eat stuff that has eggs and milk, right?"

"I guess," I replied. "But you're the vegetarian, right? You should know what you eat and what you don't."

She stuffed her mouth with crackers and left again. When we ordered Chinese food for dinner that evening, she ordered a tofu dish... and ended up eating most of my crisy eggplant instead. "The tofu tastes funny," she said. Not a good start for a growing vegetarian who will need protein, but tofu can be an acquired taste.

By Sunday morning, my vegetarian had become a pescatarian. "I eat mostly vegetables, but fish, too. We're having swordfish for dinner, right?" Sisi likes fish. So do I.

Still, I give my "pescatarian" a week (or less, depending on how soon she gets the opportunity to go to Chik Fil A). Regardless of how long this interest in food lasts, I'm pleased that she's ready to pay more attention to what she eats, where it came from and what benefits it offers nutritionally. Asking questions about food sources, learning out to prepare it in ways that are both tasty and healthy and understanding how our consumption of it impacts the environment are all worthwhile and important activities. Today's experiment might ultimately become tomorrow's lifestyle.

Until, further notice, Sisi's a pescatarian, and tonight's paella will respect the choice and feature shrimp. She may have to pick out the turkey chorizo...or not. That's up to her. I won't say a word, either way.