The Weekly Call, Part 1 of 3

My formerly troubled teen daughter (and now clearly confused adult) has put me through some emotional ups and downs in the past few months. She has the ability to make some breakthroughs in her thought process and come up with some spot-on life plans, then something emotional happens and it’s like it never happened.

Since September 2018, she has turned 25 (a milestone), secured a roommate to help pay rent (smart), and lost her job because of her attitude (again?). She, of course, says the business owner had it out for her, but I know her. She has matured in many ways, but she still hasn’t learned to leave her personal problems at the door.

Here come the lies.

Before her birthday in December, she informed me that she was coming home for a visit, but would be spending some time camping. She designated a weekend that she’d be all mine, when she’d stay with me and let me baby her a little. It was the weekend before her big birthday, so I was really looking forward to celebrating it with her. She also told me that she was quitting her job and had an awesome new one lined up that would start right after her vacation.

A little before that planned trip, her big sister came to visit me. I picked sis up from the airport and on the way home got a text from little sister. She was so sorry, but her boss reduced her hours and because of her new schedule, she wouldn’t be coming home after all. Something in the back of my mind told me she was lying—about something, or everything—but I just said, “Oh, that’s too bad. We’ll try again soon.” I even said to big sister that I knew she was scheming something.

Big sister always knows something, and she leveled with me. Little sister had been fired and she was too embarrassed to tell me. She helped me come up with a good birthday present for her little sister’s 25th birthday--$2,500, to be distributed in five monthly installments because she is terrible with money. That way, it recognized that she made it to 25 without having a drug overdose, fatal DUI, or unwanted pregnancy, and would help me relax about worrying that she would not having money for food or rent.

We got through big sister’s visit (which my husband and his son totally shit on, but that’s another story), and she was back home safely. I cried like a girl when I dropped her off at the airport and reamed my husband when I got home (again, another story).

I put in a call soon after to little sister and miraculously got through. We talked for a while about her plans, having a roommate, her dog, a guy she was seeing with a six-inch beard, work, how she finally fixed her car, how she is getting caught up with bills, etc. It was a nice conversation—probably because she told me what I wanted to hear. We talked about how I needed to be part of, not apart from, her life. I don’t need to know everything, but she’s an adult and doesn’t need to have a secret life.

In a wonderful twist, the outcome of that call was that we’d have a regular call every Tuesday at 2 p.m. That way, she would know it was coming, could prepare some notes, and could appease me and get me off her back.