Rainy Days and Moms

My younger daughter was 10 years old when she decided that living by Mom's rules was more than she could handle and she was MOVING OUT. She packed some clothes, toothbrush, soap, and supplies in her school backpack. Didn't bother to pack the school books - she wouldn't need them if she was living on her own - right? She put groceries in a sack - canned chili, tuna, chips, bread, spaghettios, a couple cans of soda. Grabbed a sleeping bag. Then she climbed out her bedroom window, got the ladder out of the shed and moved - to the roof.

This whole thing started because I grounded her for breaking some rule - I don't even remember what she had done wrong, but believe me it was probably the 100th time I had warned her about it and she deserved far worse than being put on restriction. So, with her 10-year old maturity, she figured that it would be better to be free in the world than to do what her mother told her to do.

I let her go out the window, figuring she would end up at my sister's house a block away. But a half hour later when I checked, she wasn't there. So I looked around the house and yard, in the shed, up and down the street. Hmmm... Standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, I saw what looked like a big bird out of the corner of my eye. Looked up - there she was at the peak of the roof. Sleeping bag spread out and her little roof picnic scattered around her.

"Get down from there right this minute! You could fall and break something!!" I yelled at her.

"No - you're mean and I'm never coming home again."

Puhleeze - you're on the roof dodo bird. You're already home. I didn’t actually call her a dodo bird, even if it would have felt good to tell her how silly she was being.

“OK – fine with me. You can stay up there.” With that I went back in the house. I was really worried about her falling off the roof – it was slanted pretty steeply – I pictured her sliding down and falling into the chain link fence. Should I call the fire department, police, my mom? I peeked out the front window. My neighbors were outside now, watching the spectacle, and I’m sure, discussing that single mom across the street with the bad-assed kids.

Fifteen minutes later, I went back out. “It’s getting late – do you have blankets to keep warm?”

“Yes Mom.” This was said with just the right amount of disgust.

“OK…do you have enough food?”

“Yes – go away! I don’t need you!” Now she was yelling, her piping voice screeching at me.

“Great, sounds like you really prepared for every possibility. So…did you think about the weather? It’s not always summer, sometimes it’s cold or rainy.”

I could see the awareness dawning in her eyes – Mom was up to something. Mom wasn’t yelling, she was being really quiet and that wasn’t a good thing. But my hard-headed little girl decided to bluff it out.

“Go away!” she screamed at me.

I calmly walked to the hose faucet. Turned it on full blast. Walked back out the full 50-feet length of the hose. “Are you sure you prepared for rain?” I asked her innocently.

She saw the hose and knew it was all over. As I began “raining” on her parade, she began tossing her stuff off the roof. She went down the ladder and climbed back in the window, squawking about her mean mother the whole time. Guess she decided being on restriction was better than living on her own after all.