Spying on My Daughter on Facebook.

I read in the news how Facebook is giving out all kinds of private information and that you better watch out or people/companies/schools are going to pick up things about you that you don't want them to know.  Well, my daughter could work for the CIA.  Every once in a while I check her Facebook page. It's really not stalking...it's just...well I guess you could call it spying.  I just take peek, I don't leave a message and I try and cover my tracks.  This is how I find out some very revealing details like:  "Productive day"..."working doubles"..."need a vacation". She has no idea I'm doing this unless she reads my blog which as you can tell by her Facebook entries, she's much too busy to do.

The Privacy Issue Part II

Having posted two blogs about my dear daughter written ten years ago on my brand new website, I realized I had better clear them through her.  I dreaded having her see what I wrote.  This is a girl (woman) who really, really cherishes (make that guards) her privacy.  I was all set for her to say: "You can't put that stuff on the web. That's my life! Blog about someone else." The fact that she's my only child and that I had written a book, set up a website, created writing workshops all for and about Moms would definitely put a damper on my efforts.  I was all set to create a fictional child just so that I would have something to blog about.  So late last night I called her and told her to look at the website with particular attention to the blogs.  This is the email I got back from her: "Those are fine...no worries. Nice website by the way.love you. talk to you tomorrow. Charlotte."
This is the girl who wouldn't let me read her high school yearbook. I could look at the pictures, but I had to close my eyes when it came to her friend's inscriptions.  I love this girl.

invasion of privacy issue

Charlotte with Cigarette

I find a picture on the floor in her bedroom. (“What were you doing in my bedroom?”)  It’s of Charlotte and her friend Sarah taken during our recent trip to Costa Rica.  Charlotte is smiling. In her left hand she has a drink.  It looks like a fruit slurry to me.  In her right hand is a cigarette. A cigarette! A cigarette in my daughter’s hand looking oh-so-natural! My stomach turns. I am a radical ex smoker.

When she would come home and occasionally smell of cigarettes it was always from everyone else’s smoking.  When I smelled her breath it was sweet and tobacco free.  Now as I think back, maybe it was too sweet. Maybe she brushed her teeth, or took a breath mint.  Now I have to confront her on this. I know she will have an explanation. What I don’t know is whether it will be a lie or not.

Her explanation of the picture with the cigarette:

“I was just posing. It was actually Sarah’s cigarette”

“Sarah smokes?"Sarah is on the tennis team.

“No, not really. See it’s a full cigarette.”

“It’s lit,” I point out.

“I don’t smoke. I never smoked. I’m not a smoker.”  End of story.  And I believe her. Or more precisely, I want to believe her. Oh, boy did I ever.  And then out of nowhere apropos of nothing she says:

“ I may want to major in early childhood development and teach elementary school." This is the first time she’s even mentioned a major or even college for that matter.  I tell her she would be a wonderful teacher.  And she would. She would also be wonderful undercover agent. She seems to demonstrate a knack for throwing people off the trail.

Mean to My Mother

Mean to my mother.

October 16

Saturday Charlotte drove down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to live. That means she’s doesn’t live here anymore.  Even though she left her 600 piece shot glass collection, her 45 purses, her stack of periwinkle blue pillows, her bathroom full of every kind of lotion, face cream, lipstick, etc. etc. She is gone. 

I didn’t call her in the morning. I didn’t call her at lunch. I almost called her at one o’clock. And then I patted myself on the back for not “stalking” her as she put it…and I figured  that since I managed to not make those earlier calls I had earned the right to call her.  And of course all I got was her voice mail.

Yesterday she left me a message that she was glad she was there and she missed me. But today already she doesn’t miss me, she doesn’t have her phone on so I can talk to her, she doesn’t call and she’s moved on. 

But it’s O.K. I’m O.K Because all I have to do is think back to my mother and how she let me go... all  the way to Paris, all the way to New York, and never said a word…something that always drove me crazy.

(I had turned off the radio to write this. Now I have to turn it on again…WCBS news …I need someone talking in the background otherwise I feel lonely. And that’s the last thing I want to feel because there’s not much I can do about it.. As many phone calls as  I’ve had today…as many good friends as I can count on to listen to me…I always have to hang up the phone and then there is silence and that’s a reminder that I am alone. Yikes.

I was so mean to my mother. She was so sweet. So giving. Or rather, so sacrificing. Always doing, doing, doing for me. Stop doing, I wanted scream. Stop caring. Stop patting me with little soft hands. Pat, pat, pat. So soft and smooshy. She was such a  a push-over. My father was hard-edged and selfish. And he got everything he wanted. And Mom got hardly anything. I wanted to be like him not her.

And yet OMG, I just realized that I am like my mother with my daughter. There’s  nothing I won’t do for her.  I am a push over. I am so soft-handed and smooshy with her.  And I find myself wanting to  do, do, do.