T A B L E_ T A L K

When do parental beliefs infringe on their kids' rights? Draw the line in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

"The Rugrats Movie"
By Andrew Leonard
These babies rule! A 4-year-old and her dad give the new "Rugrats" brand extension a big thumbs-up
(11/20/98)

Second Thoughts: A modest proposal
By Sallie Tisdale
Hurricane Mitch offers U.S. troops the chance not to show force, but to help others -- especially those we've hurt before
(11/19/98)

Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets
By Hillary Rodham Clinton
What kids want to know about Buddy and Socks
(11/18/98)

Drama Queen Contestants
This won't hurt a bit: This month's Drama Queen candidates tell tales of their most hellish experiences at the gynecologist's office
(11/17/98)

Things are not quite what they seem
By Polly Shulman
Themes of transformation populate three weirdly hypnotic children's books
(11/16/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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BY DEBRA GWARTNEY | Again we have dinner, my oldest daughter Amanda and I. Not at the house, where her younger sisters will hover around her and ask again to see the green devil face tattoo burned into her tender forearm or will want to touch her hair, chopped off with third-grade blunt scissors and dyed a Mad Dog 20-20 shade of purple. Not at the house, because Amanda knows there, at my table, I'll comment on the angry, sore earlobe being stretched with a jammed-in ceramic plug; the ragged, dirty Carhart logging jeans; the scabby arms.

At the house, ghosts of Amanda's former self sit at chairs around the kitchen table. Eight-year-old Amanda giddy over how high she got on her toes at ballet class; 11-year-old Amanda scratching out a science report on electrical currents, coloring orange and red jolts on the margins of the paper for effect and decoration; 13-year-old Amanda punching a fist through the air toward me, then pounding her palm down on the marred oak, condemning my rules, demanding she be allowed to attend a punk rock concert downtown. Home causes this oldest daughter, now 18, to withdraw into corners, turn her face and back toward the door until she can run again.

So tonight, the two of us eat instead at a restaurant. A small Chinese place downtown, as benign as the blunt, blond chopsticks that wag through our curled fingers. Amanda orders shrimp. It glistens with color -- green peppers and pea pods, yellow bamboo shoots and baby corn, the hues a startling contrast to her pasty face. She shoves her fingers, with her dirty fingernails, into the food to aid the chopsticks. I ask her not to, unable to hold back this mother-talk. She digs her hands in deeper.

The city is small enough that I can find her every few weeks. I know where she goes to drink coffee, the downtown corners where she finds the panhandling good. Or sometimes she drops by the house on the pretense of looking for mail or a warmer sweater. I suggest that we go somewhere for a meal together. She usually agrees. At the restaurant, I ask her again if she wants to get out of the street life she's chosen. Are you looking for a job? Are you thinking about school? Do you want to go stay with your aunt, your grandmother, your father? Where are you sleeping? I ask her to let me help her make a plan, but she looks away. I'm not like you, she says, I'm not a planner.

I dread the dinners as much as she does. Though they're a connection, they are a forced one. So why do I keep making them happen? I tell her she can come home anytime if she agrees to live like a member of the family -- someone who helps and talks and fills her day with a job or school. Someone who comes home when she says she's going to. But she tells me her friends are her family now. After a year on the street, wandering from shelter to shelter, becoming hard and indifferent, there's nothing about our family that appeals to her anymore. She doesn't want warmth. She doesn't want the structure a family provides. She wants to be free, she says. To drink if she wants, to use drugs if she wants, to smoke cigarettes or do nothing all day. Without me looking over her shoulder, scolding.

N E X T_ P A G E: At what point do you let go?