Eleven is a magical age.  You have hit the sweet spot where you are not a little kid, but you are not yet a full on teenager, so you have license to indulge in the slightly silly for just a little while longer, while slowly trying on the image of the young adult.  Eleven is a time of transition, from the safe routine of elementary school, to the busy uncertainty of middle school, which prepares you for the race that will be high school and college.  You become more aware of your emotions, as you begin to understand more of what's going on in the world around you, and your reactions start to take on an adult complexity.

I was reminded of this recently when my daughter and I went to see the movie "Inside Out", which details the emotional inner workings of an 11 year old girl after her family makes a major transition, moving from suburban Minnesota to San Francisco.  Up until that point, while I realized that my daughter had been through quite a bit in her short 11 years, I had completely forgotten how her processing methods themselves might be changing, from that of a child  to those of a young adult, while all of these things were going on.

Talking with both kids after watching the movie, I started to notice that all of us had major change going on in out lives at the age of eleven.  Changes that eventually shaped our pursuits, as well as out overall outlook on life.

At the age of eleven, my son was dragged along with me as we experienced the functional homelessness of living first with my then boyfriend (who eventually became my daughter's father), then with my sister.  As with most people living in overcrowded situations, tensions abounded, and no matter how much I tried to shield him from it, he couldn't help but noticed the strained silences from the adults around him.  Still struggling with ADHD, one day, his medication disappeared, never to be seen again.  This would start the longest, worst period of school for him, the time when he knew what he needed to do, but did not know how to stay focused enough to do it.

He became a big brother at the age of eleven. I remember him being woken up in the middle of the night, and told to throw on sweatpants, and pile into the car while I drove myself to the hospital.  I recall him pushing my wheelchair into the waiting room, and waiting with me for whatever my next instructions were to be.  I also remember the fascinated look on his face when he met his little sister for the first time, marveling out loud about how tiny she was.

He also resumed taking capoeira, a martial art he had started at the Lutheran school he had attended, and he also started cooking, as he was finally tall enough to see completely over the stove.  With capoeira, he would form friendships and mentor relationships that he still has to this day, and he eventually became such a good cook, he is in the process of pursuing it as a vocation.

My daughter only turned 11 in January of this year, but she has already experienced having to pack and move quickly from a place we had lived since she was a toddler.  She has experienced the death of a very young friend that she saw and played with daily.  She has dealt with adults that had no issues with treating her like a stereotype rather than an individual. She has experienced peer racism, sexism, and class-ism, and had to figure out how to NOT respond to any of these things, as she has unfortunately found out that any response to provocation will likely get her into more trouble that  those doing the provoking.  Such is the life of the bullied.

She has also discovered a love of learning, especially math and science subjects, and has a great deal of fun with the engineering kits created by GoldieBlox.  She has just completed her third trip to a week long camp conducted by the Lutheran church, and while she doesn't always enjoy her cabin mates, she absolutely LOVES the experience of going to camp: the hiking, swimming, sleeping outside, and simply getting out of the city, and around different people, for a little while. Soon, she will be part of two mixed generation choirs, and with one has performed as both a singer and a dancer for well over a year.

At the age of eleven, my older sister and I were in a state of flux.  Our mother and younger sister were living in Hawaii, our father was here in Los Angeles, but not living in a big enough place to care for the two of us, so we were living with his cousin.  I was in my final year of elementary school, and completely unaware of how to deal with my unusual personality.  Becoming a nerd was not cool in 1981, and my appreciation for, well, EVERYTHING, was not looked upon anything close to favorably.

In the middle of all of this, I received my very first Bible from the husband of the cousin we were living with.  This was in response to my complaints about the pew bibles at his church, and I treasured that small white bible with my name written on it in gold letters until it was lost in storage 9 years ago.  One of the sons in this family introduced my sister and I to rock and roll, via local radio station KROQ, often by acting out the lyrics to some of the songs for our amusement.  I've since taught the movements to at least two of those songs to my own children, which they find hilarious.  It was also during this time that I made my first halting attempts at writing at the suggestion of this same cousin, who suggested that I try to write down my feelings about everything that I was going through at the time.  After seeing a little poetry, and a few paragraphs, she then uttered the magic words:  "You are actually pretty good at this.  You should keep this up."

I sit here contemplating this as, eleven years after the birth of my daughter, my son prepares to leave the nest.  My daughter is losing her longest, closest friend, and I feel like I am losing the longest, hardest job I've ever had. We are both happy for him, of course, and in our own little way, will miss him.  But if eleven is our family's number for changes and transitions, then now is the time for him to start moving on.  It will be interesting to see what the next eleven years will bring.

In 9 days, my daughter will have completed her elementary education.  In roughly the same number of days, my son will finally start halting, hesitant steps toward his own future.  It's been a long, strange trip for both of them, especially the last six months.  Sudden moves, peer foolishness and the constant search for a safe space to be themselves in a world that endlessly begs them to conform, have been their unwanted companions on this leg of the journey.



Me, as Mom, has been the steady, if not always most reasonable, presence.  Stress can do that to a person, I suppose.  Always supportive, often honest to the point of unintended hurt, but mostly trying to keep every ball in the air while holding the kids together through their own slogs through this strange concrete wilderness, trying to figure out where they want to go, and how, exactly, do they get there.

For my daughter, elementary school was academically easy, socially the second circle of hell.  When she wasn't racing through her school work, she was trying to figure out the best way to navigate the tenuous social rules that would land her someone to play with at recess.  How do you communicate to a child that even under the age of ten the kids around her are being taught condescension, racism, sexism, and casual cruelty to those showing any kind of fear or weakness by parents who were likely taught the same things so early on in life that they are now ingrained? I wanted, more than anything to help her develop a lifelong love of learning, because in life, you will do a lot of that, un-dulled by the typical urban school experience.  I wish I could say I succeeded.  I will say that she doesn't hate learning, so much as she has developed a distinct distaste for both the institution of school, and the people within it. What I hope for her, as she takes this next step towards her ultimate (for now) goal of becoming an Engineer, is that she will meet new people a little more into academics like herself, and more teachers that spark her interest in different subjects.

My son has had a much more difficult journey.  Starting with the fact that learning difficulties, pride and anger don't exactly mix.  Add crippling low self esteem, a dash of depression, and the societal pressure to hide it all behind a facade of "Everything is fine", and down the rabbit hole you go, wondering if there is in fact a bottom to this, or are you just being led along another endless trail.  Around, and around, and around went my constant discussions with my son regarding what steps he was taking to get on his way to whatever was going to come next in his life, the un-discussed issue being his fear of failing at everything he had ever tried, and his ongoing fear of continuing to fail, no matter how hard he tried.  Now that he has finally realized that not trying is failing by default, my hope for him is that he finds satisfaction in small victories, and finds some level of peace away from the voices that would belittle those small accomplishments.

Like most parents, I wanted to give my children things I thought were missing from my own childhood.  Not material things; a sense of peace, comfort and confidence that I am always there for them, even if I do work full time.  I wanted so much to spare them everything I had gone through in school: all the bullying and exclusion for being "different", the isolation associated with rarely being able to do anything or go anywhere with friends, standing out in all of the wrong ways for never being enough of anything (pretty, talented, intelligent, etc) to get away from the ridicule.  What I have learned is that while I couldn't, and can't, protect them from the ugly, the petty, and the pointlessly mean in the world, and I can, and do, they to prepare them by teaching them to handle life with equal parts resilience (you will likely deal with assholes all your life, so start learning now), and boundaries (no one is obligated to deal with harassment, in any form).  I can help them learn to be comfortable in their own skin, no matter how hard someone calling themselves your "friend" tries to fit you into their narrow mold.  I can help them develop a spiritual foundation so that even in the midst of terrible circumstances, even if all of their best efforts have failed, even if they feel they have done all they could and the world has let them down, they have a space within themselves to find peace, and calm, and hopefully, understanding.

And I can pray that whatever mistakes I made, or will make in the future, they know that my intentions were pure, my heart was always in the right place, and that, eventually, they will find their path, and continue their journey.  And they will always know that I am here for them: to hold their hands, kick their butts, or whatever needs to be done to help them get to their destination.

For both kids, one journey has ended, and another is about to begin.  Here's to having a great trip.

It came in the middle of her answering the standard question, "So.  Anything interesting happen at school today?"

I rarely get to pick my daughter up from school, mostly because I work a full time, day shift job.  Mercifully, I work a 9/80 schedule, which means that although I still work 80 hours over the course of two weeks, it is compressed into 9 days, giving me one day off every other week.  My daughter loves my days off because they mean that not only does she get to sleep until 7:00 (a decided improvement over getting up at 5:30), I generally take her to school and pick her up, which gives us time to talk and spend a few minutes together at the beginning and end of her school day.  It's only a few minutes, but we try to make those few minutes count as much as possible.  Especially considering the conversation that followed.

"So, you remember XYZ?"  I rather vaguely remember the little girl, as the same rotating group of kids has basically been together since Kindergarten.

"Yeah, sorta. Why?"

A 10-year old version of OMG enters her voice: "Well XYZ had some shorts on today, and at some point she rolled them all they way up to HERE (using her hands to indicate where the upper thigh connects to the hipbone), and she was showing a little bit in the back!  She got sent to the office, but she hurried up and rolled them back down before she got there."  At the next stop light, I turned around and looked at my daughter.  "You have GOT to be kidding me?"  "Nope.  She hangs around with a group of girls that call themselves "The Strippers". (And yes, she did the Air Quotation Marks with her fingers!)  That is NOT cool."

The light changed, and we continued running a few errands but I was floored by her story.  Understand, I am not a person to get into slut-shaming, and I believe in a woman's right to make her own choices at all times, regarding everything from what she chooses to wear, to what career she decides to embark on.  Note I said, a WOMAN's choices.  These are 9 and 10 year old girls.  In Elementary school.  Identifying with strippers, the ultimate projection of oneself for the approval of the male gaze.  This is troubling in that, while we are trying to get children to begin to imagine themselves in business or science or medicine or technology by pointing out those that have succeeded in those fields as examples, there are still those out there that are so mesmerized by the false glamour and faux wealth presented to them by music, television and movies that more reasonable voices are being drowned out.  Worse than that, however, is the loss of innocence implied by these young girls knowledge of, and desire to emulate, such an adult concept.

We can all remember a time when we were not burdened with the trials of adult life; when our concerns were Barbies, Hot Wheels, Legos, playing hide and seek or riding bikes for hours on end.  And we can all tell you when that concern turned away from our childhood fascinations, and we started becoming more interested in the opposite sex as something more than one more person to play Tag with. I find it alarming that the innocence window is shrinking every year.  Why not allow kids to be kids for as long as possible?  I know that there are products to be sold, and money to be made from those that want their children to have the latest, and most fashionable clothing and gadgets, but 7 year olds in booty shoots, boots and cut off tops (worn to school by one of Ashley's classmates a few years ago) gives one pause.  Certain clothing, worn in certain combinations, are generally meant to have the effect of gaining favorable male attention.  Of course, the flip side of that is just trying to cool off, and being on the receiving end of unwanted, and often vulgar, male attention.  Being that I live in a fairly diverse, working class urban neighborhood, I am hard-pressed to speak to which of those two scenarios was at play here.

It has become very difficult to create safe spaces for children to have full childhoods.  Especially in inner-city neighborhoods, where the rush to assume adult identities and characteristics is exacerbated by a media obsessed with a certain image of inner-city inhabitants, popular culture that celebrates and markets pornography based images of women as ideal, and parents determined to give their kids everything they didn't have as children, even at the cost of a hurried leap into adolescence.  Or emulating adult entertainment professions that in reality they should know nothing about.

I was a kid once.  I gamed my mother a couple of times by wearing one thing out of the house, then changing once I got to school. I got caught, obviously, and subsequently was closely scrutinized by my mother everyday after that to make sure I didn't do it again.  I don't fault my mother for this, as I realize now that she understood that whatever you think of yourself, people are going to perceive you based on whatever they were taught about how people present themselves.  Meaning dressing scantily to attract male attention/approval might backfire if those same males were taught to perceive scantily dressed women, not as the sexually liberated women they see themselves as, but as the loose or amoral, according to whoever raised them.  I was also 16, and a junior in high school at the time. This is not a conversation anyone should be worrying about with elementary school aged children, girl or boy.

I know I can't protect my daughter from everything.  That's impossible, and I can't even begin to try.  But I can make a small place for her to safely explore her world without having to learn to understand an adult world, and adult concepts before she is physically, mentally or emotionally ready.  It's a small thing, but the least I can do to make sure that she has a COMPLETE childhood before she is launched into the grown-up world.