Parenting: The Girlfriend
Sleeps Over
(and
other highlights in the utterly shameless sexual development of my children)
by Joyce Maynard
Published in I Wanna Be Sedated, Seal Press, Edited by Gail Hudson and Faith Conlon, pub. Spring, 2005.
Part Two
Maybe it was a function of their having grown up with a single mother, and the fact that we always talked a lot amongst ourselves, but even in their very early teens my sons seemed drawn to have not simply girlfriends but relationships. Willy was the kind to talk on the phone for hours -- so long, in fact, that I would sometimes come into his room, late, and find him conked out, with the receiver still off the hook, on the pillow beside him, and the sound of a dial tone.
In his junior year, Charlie fell in love with a young woman I will call Emily. It was a beautiful relationship to observe -- full of tenderness and excitement and romance, genuine consideration for each other, and a great deal of communication. Because Emily lived some distance from our house (on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge from our house in Marin County), the pattern developed that if they were out together late one night, one of them would simply stay over at the home of the other, on whichever side of the bridge they ended up. When Emily would sleep at our house, I'd set out blankets and a towel for her, and the next morning, I'd cook French toast or pancakes for us all, and think how wonderful it was to have a girl around again, and wish she could be with us more often.
This was a stage in my life in which my own romantic life was pretty bleak. No man in the picture, none on the horizon. Where, in the early years following my divorce, I had assumed it was only a matter of time before my life-partner galloped up on his steed, I no longer assumed I wouldn't spend my life as an unattached woman. Looking across the breakfast table, some mornings, at the two young seventeen year olds, so much in love, I felt a certain wistfulness.
As one who had dedicated herself, from her first days as a parent, to the idea of openness and accessibility, on all topics, and to the belief in presenting sex as a natural and healthy part of life, I tried to convey to my sons (as I had, with my daughter) my willingness to talk about whatever issues might come up in their lives. Sometimes, too, it seemed as though I should not simply wait for them to raise a concern (which can be hard, as I remembered well from my days of changing into my gym suit in the toilet stall, at age thirteen) but to go ahead and address it.
In that spirit, I bought a box of condoms, and set them in my sons' bathroom, with the explanation that while I thought they were too young to be sexually active, I also recognized that they might feel otherwise, and that I could not ultimately control their choices."One thing's for sure," I said. "If you're going to be sexually active, you'd better be sure you're both protected." Physical protection being only a part of the story, I knew. There was all that other stuff that goes on too, about the heart. Didn't I know?
It was a Saturday morning, following a Friday night in which Charlie and Emily had ended up -– together -- on our side of the bridge. I had fired up my frying pan, to make the pancakes, so I thought I'd go downstairs to my sons' rooms to wake them up -- the two of them, plus Emily.
Only this time, when I walked through the TV room to get to my sons' rooms, there was nobody on the futon couch. When I got to Charlie's room, I saw two heads sticking out from under the covers. Charlie's being one. Emily's the other.
At the time, I didn't say anything, besides calling out breezily that breakfast was ready. But after -- once Emily had gone home, an hour later -- I went back downstairs, where my sons were installed, and told them we had to talk.
"It's this sleeping over business," I said. "Just because Emily gets to sleep in our house doesn't mean it's ok for her to sleep in your bed, Charlie."
He looked at me sweetly. "We like to snuggle, Mom," he said. "What's wrong with that?"
Nothing, of course. Who could come down on the side against snuggling? Particularly when the person being snuggled was someone as lovable as Emily. Wouldn't I have liked it -- a whole lot -- if I had someone great to snuggle with, myself?
"But it's not just snuggling, Charlie," I told him. "That's just not possible between a teenage boy and girl who are crazy about each other.
It's going to lead to sex, of course. That's pretty well unavoidable."
My son didn't deny it. He just looked at me.
"So, " I said. Faltering, before I'd even begun. Being the authority figure with the heavy boot is my least favorite part of parenthood. "From now on the rule around here is, no girlfriends sleeping with you." There. I said it. This was the kind of thing the sensible, grown up parents said.
"So, let's get this straight," said Willy. "Charlie is only allowed to have sex in cars?"
This didn't sound like a very good bottom line conclusion. But neither had I arrived at a better one. I opened my mouth to try again, not even sure of what would come out next.
"When someone sleeps over with you this way," I began, "it involves the whole family in a way. That might not be fair to the rest of us."
"What about when you had a boyfriend, and he slept over?" Willy again. "Maybe we weren't always so comfortable with that, either."
There was a statement that had a ring of truth. More guilt-inspiring, maybe, than my older son's potentially fatal attack of appendicitis, while his mother sat outside a restaurant, a few miles away, necking in a car.
"And anyway, we all like Emily, right?" my son went on. "And it's not like she's some person none of us knows, that just showed up at the breakfast table." At this point, in fact, Charlie and Emily had been going together in a pretty serious way for over a year now. Longer (though my sons were too kind to point this out) than any relationship I'd had, since their father and I had parted, ten years earlier."I thought you said we shouldn't be embarrassed or shy," my fourteen year old pointed out. "Like, what's so terrible about expressing affection?"
"It's just that sex is... sex is... sex is... private," I said. "Sex is something you do when you're independent enough that you have your own place to live. Not something you get into, in your own home, with your family all around."
Long pause again. My older son, whose actions had inspired this discussion, still said nothing, but his younger brother demonstrated no such reticence.
"Hmm," he reflected, wrinking his brow. "Let me just make sure I've got this clear. Does this policy about not doing it in our own house apply to masturbation too?"
As I said, I believe
in talking straight with one's children. Using the real words for real
things -- communicating openly, and when we do, conveying to our kids
the clear message that their sexuality is a natural and healthy part of
life. Free from guilt and shame. Encouraging the asking of questions.
Giving straight answers, back.
It was my chilren's job, as teenagers in love, to lobby with all their hearts and their best debating skills (including a certain below-the-belt impulse to inspire massive guilt in their mother) for the right to have their girlfriends sleep over. And it was probably my job, as their parent, to say no.
Nonetheless, sometime over the course of the next few months, Emily began sleeping over regularly at our house, on weekends. Or at least, if she didn't, it was only because Charlie was sleeping over –- in similarly close proximity —- at her house.
And when, a couple of years later, my younger son embarked on his own similarly serious relationship, also at age sixteen, there came a point when she, too, started sleeping over, no longer on the futon. While, two floors above, I continued to sleep alone.
And though I like to think of myself as a woman who considers carefully the meaning of her choices as a parent and comes to them with resolute conviction, I cannot say that —- in the matter of the girlfriends sleeping over —- any of these outcomes occurred as the result of some carefully thought out moral position, or that my ultimate stance on the matter was one of utter and unwavering clarity. Our lives simply evolved, and that's the direction things went.
A few years back,
I published a memoir about my life. In it, I told a number of fairly intimate
stories about my experiences. This book was hugely criticized at the time
of its publication, and interestingly, a very particular theme emerged
in the negative remarks that were made, less about the book than about
me, personally. I was seldom criticized for my writing style, or charged
with a failure to portray interesting situations and characters. A single
word showed up, again and again, in the invective leveled at my work.
The word was "shameless."
As much as I differed with their ultimate assessment of my work, I knew my critics were right about me. I had come a long way from being that awkward girl in the locker room stall. I was shameless. And with any luck, my children would grow up to be that way, too. All evidence suggested they were headed in that direction.
During this period in which I was branded the shameless woman, the youngest of my children left home. Willy, the boy who once serenaded vaginas on a New York City bus, years before most of us ever heard of Eve Ensler, had become one of the most fearless and self-confident peole I've ever met. Willy —- now Will —- went to Africa for a year, on his own. Months would go by in which I'd receive only the barest forms of communication from my seventeen year old, with weeks of silence between each message. Then I'd receive an email that might begin and end with a line like, "I'm over the worst of the malaria now. Love, Will."
And so I was alone then. Nobody around to call me if I chose to sport purple underwear. No teenage girlfriends sleeping over anymore either.
When the last child leaves, as Will did, there comes the day of reckoning, at last —- the moment when a parent looks back over the tangle of years that once seemed endless, and now appear so fleeting, and considers how the whole thing went. Where her regrets lie. What she'd do differently now. And what may actually have worked.
It's dangerous, allowing one's self to feel smug about any of this. I don't subscribe to the practice some parents engage in when their children reach their twenties and all appearances suggest they're doing great -- namely, patting one's self on the back and saying, "Look at my kids. They turned out great. Here's how I did it."
No one in this family is hooked on heroin. When my children sign off on their —- infrequent —- phone calls to me, they say "I love you," and when they come home, which they do now and then, they still give me not just a hug but a kiss. But I'm not about to start proclaiming that I've got some kind of recipe for successful parenting here.
Still, where attitudes about sex are concerned (and attitudes about love, as well), I'll venture to say I see promising signs of health and well-being among my offspring. My children may or may not make happy marriages, raise healthy children, build careers they love, contribute in a lasting way to the welfare of society. Not one of them has a regular nine-to-five kind of job at the moment (neither has either of their parents, hard-working as we've been these past three decades), and none has much of a savings account, I think. But to me, getting this other part figured out is a different kind of money in the bank, and so it makes me happy that in the last six months, each of their current partners has written me or called, simply to thank me for my extraordinarily loving daughter or son.
I can hardly accept
credit for this. Except to say, my children grew up unafraid to speak
of the unmentionable things (sex high on the list) that are the facts
of all our lives. It strikes me that there can be little better foundation
for healthy coupling than the ability to communicate free of guilt or
shame. To say what we feel, free of ambivalence or hang ups. In short,
to be shameless. Which might even allow a person to say, in answer to
a question concerning the reason for choosing purple underwear, "Yes,
somebody might see it, perhaps." Because what, when you think about
it, is so terrible about that?
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