Seeing My Teen’s Truth in Her Lies
The Growing Pains of Drunken Nights
I lurch up in bed. Mira*! My first thought is for our sweet sixteen year old, our wayward daughter, due back from training late tonight. There are too many lights and my blankets are tangled with my sleep.
“Is Mira okay?” I ask my husband, framed by the light of the hallway, stood outside our bedroom door.
He is on the phone and the tic in his cheek, where he hides his fear and emotion, throbs to the side of his serious grownup look (still rare though he’s in his 50s).
“Not really — she’s drunk.”
Then he’s talking to the phone again, but I don’t know to whom. I’m disoriented with worries and half sleep as I grab my robe and follow him and the phone, they are speaking in Croatian so I do not understand, and he’s making notes on a pad. I have so many questions tumbling over each other in my mouth, but they are silenced by that tic, pulsating like an ominous warning light, that tells me not to interrupt.
As I trail him and his conversations around the apartment I do not know she’s at home in her room, with her head in my blue plastic washing-up tub, which has made its way with her to her bed, in staggers. Too many dreadful possibilities surge in my head, and I mentally ready myself for a trip to the…
