Girls Love Batman, Too

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness, inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there
Billy Steinberg, as recorded by the amazing Cyndy Lauper


"Mom, I HATE my room!" she says at an incredible decibel level. Loud enough, it seems, to transcend the orchestra of pop-culture noises piercing the invisible barrier between her bedroom and the kitchen doorway. " I mean, I really HATE it. You said we could paint when I switched, Mom." It's not so much a complaint, but more of her unofficial thesis on the many broken promises of a modern day mom. She feels, I know, that words coming from my mouth are worthless, said as much to maintain peaceful silence at this equatorial line between the continents of Momland and the Outer Banks of Teenage Girldom as it's said just to be saying something. Pointless drivel, sometimes,is a beautiful thing. At times, I find myself talking to her, to Chynna, to this prettier, smarter, all around better rendition of me, and not really hearing what I'm saying. It just feels so good to have a connection to her. Walking into her room, I think as I forge through a sea of dirty clothes - are they really dirty? How does one person wear so many clothes in just a week? - is like exploring uncharted territory. It looks idyllic, until you get in the big middle. I consider giving up before I've even stepped in the door, but by then, it would take just as much effort to turn around as it would to forge ahead. I need a compass, or maybe a machete. It's the noise that always gets me. Who is that, singing? Is that singing? It sounds like someone is worshipping Satan and running over animals in a Mac truck, simultaneously. Why is the TV on, too? How can anyone stand to be in this room for more than 15 seconds, I wonder. I must look like I smell a decomposing animal, at that point. She laughs.The edges of her eyes close as she smiles. She shakes her head back and forth. The sentiment is instantly translated. "Mom, you are so old," she's thinking. "Whatever am I going to do with you, Momma?" Indeed, Chynna my dear, I think back at her. Whatever will we do.



It's like watching my own youth, a movie of me. Seeing me, watching me in another time. Thinking that this must be what my mother saw when I had such epiphanies. Realizing how similar my mini-me and I truly are. Noticing how she talks with her hands, just like me. Seeing her indignant stance as she puts her hands on her hips and points her right knee toward the corner, the heel of her right foot resting on top of her left foot. Just like me.Just like my mother. Suddenly, I'm back in my mother's house, standing in her kitchen - though she did not live there anymore, making homemade sloppy joe's for my dad.I'm 17. I stir the meat, talking absentmindedly to my father, when he says softly, "You stand just like your mother. Just like her." It's then that it hits me. The truth. The brevity of youth. The mistakes. A product of divorce, I, too, am divorced. Chynna, I wonder, is this your destiny? Do you exist just to wander the world and repeat the mistakes of your mother, and her mother before her? How far does this mistake heredity extend, I wonder? Is it like welfare? Is this a spell cast upon us by the wicked witch of the Catch 22's? Are we just going around and around in circles - riding some merry-go-round that's just a little too fast?

It's then that I consciously decide to engage in the conversation.

"Baby, what, exactly do you wanna do? I mean, you know I wanted to paint your room, but it took everything within my power to get the rooms switched around as it was.
The boys were NOT happy campers to switch to the room with just one closet, either." This entire room switch was a horrible idea, I realize, creating more problems
than it solved. Chynna's unhappiness with, as she termed it, the swamp bedroom that was always a balmy 80 degrees no matter what the thermostat says - was more than I
could tolerate. So, 6 months ago I told her they could make the switch. Then, 6 weeks ago, we actually did it. Maybe 6 years from now we'll complete the task? I am overcome by disparity, by the realization that she won't be here 6 years from now - or even in 2 years, defiantly arguing with me, drinking the last Dr Pepper in the fridge,leaving the bathroom in a mess....she'll be away at college. She'll be learning how to be an adult, a woman, a wholly thinking, independent entity. I am overcome with sadness, then, realizing just how empty my nest has become. In 30 seconds, I make the biggest decision I've made in a calendar year. "Chynna", I say with decisive clarity,"just take the bull by the horns. Make us a plan. Tell me what what you need. I'm fine with the outcome, I just don't have the energy to make the plan." As a smile bigger than the Grand Canyon lights up my 16 year old daughter's cherubic face, and as the infamous ice-pick dimple adds (if even possible) yet more beauty to her impressive landscape, she approaches closer. My underling, still, by a good 2 1/2 inches, she stands on the tops of her tiny, chubby, impossibly minute size 4 toes and grasps my chin with thumb and index finger. "That's my girl," she says. "I knew you'd come around! Oh, momma, you won't regret this! It's all I've ever wanted! What are we gonna do? Can we do Batman?" "What? No!" I yell, surprised by my own naivety. "I call foul, Chynna!" Crinkling up my nose and feigning disgust. "You know I do not like this whole Batman mentality." "But mom," she drawls, stretching my nomenclature out to several syllables,"think about how cool that would look. We could paint the walls bright yellow and do all the Gotham City buildings in gray, with a huge, black, bat signal on the wall across from the window," she points. With her arms looking like a military drill routine, pointing with practiced straight arms and stiff fingers. Choruses of "this can go here" and "that can go there" flowed in unison, from both our voices. We discussed our many options, mostly her ideas, her presentations - me in contemplation mode, like a modern day thinker sculpture. Our fraggle-ish pontytails nodding in unison. Both of us dressed in capri pajama pants and big t-shirt on this lazy Saturday morning. Aggies for her, for that's the only college, she argued on a weekly
basis, she'd set foot in no matter what the cost. Jackrabbits, for me, since it was my favorite sleep shirt, large and soft, plucked from the air by my husband at a high school football game with same mascot - the result of a touchdown by my teenage son's team, no doubt. So, we planned. We schemed. We conferred. We designed. Black walls with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe's gorgeous face, all done in chalk ("Chynna, you're such a good artist, I know you could pull that off.") A pirate bedroom, or our interpretation of, with red walls,and leopard print curtains - a headboard fashioned from an old door. Maybe even a "polar bear in the snow" look - everything stark white with splashes of hot pink or turquoise. There would be no pink. We'd done that in her room when she was just two - antique furniture, pink and white striped walls, window seat - even complete with a dollhouse in the corner. "That's so you and not me, mom!" She laugh-talked when I mentioned that look again. "Honestly, I'm way too complicated for that!" I can't help but smile at this statement. I remember, like yesterday, the arrogance of my youth. How amazingly sophisticated I was at her age, or so I'd thought. Why, I, too, thought settling for the norm was as bad as committing a mortal sin! Such time, such precision, such soulful crafting we girls put into the way we're perceived.
How sweet, I think fleetingly, she really doesn't know that life is going to kick her around for a while, very soon! And, then, just like that, a decision is made. It seems so obvious to the both of us. We wonder, silently, independently of each other, why we didn't think of this sooner. It simply can be nothing else! We will do a Disney princess room. We'll paint the walls a very adult oceany blue/green - just a shade or two darker than a Tiffany blue. It will be a room fit for Ariel herself, since that's the Disney princess of choice for my daughter. Belle's just ok. Snow White is too antiquated. Cinderella outlived her reign, in Chynna's opinion. Sleeping Beauty...waaaaay too passive. Jasmine? Ehh - she get's nod for being a brunette, but that's about it. Esmerelda had it going on, but she just never gathered enough steam. Ariel,on the other hand. Ariel is perfect. Different. Unique. Ariel has purpose. Ariel is a searcher of truths, a learner of meanings. She's beautiful. She's so darn perpetually happy. She never thinks a negative thought. She never gives up. She's scrappy. That's my Chynna. This is a no brainer, suddenly. This, it seems, will be the a room under the sea, so to speak. "Chynna," I say, impulsively. "This will be the very last room change, ever, for you at home. Understand? Is this really something you can live with indefinitely? Do you see yourself spending holidays in this room, in this way we're describing it, years from now while you're home from college - home with your kids?" "Oh, momma", she states with only the slightest of eye-rolls, a trait she definitely inherited from me. "I will always be 16 going on 8! You know that, right?"

More than you ever guessed, princess. Way more.