My son, the stranger

The sweet boy I raised is gone, replaced by a sullen, scornful teenager. It may be a phase, but it's breaking my heart.

By Anne Lamott

Read more: Anne Lamott, Boys, Teenagers, Adolescence, Life

May 22, 2006 | This is the story I would have most loved to come upon last week, when I was as crushed and hopeless as I've been since becoming a mother.

My nearly 17-year-old son, Sam, and I had a fight last Saturday that was so ugly and insane that it left me wondering if anyone in the history of time had ever been a worse parent, or raised such a horrible child. I believed the answer was no, because I had not read anything that would dispute this, except perhaps for Lionel Dahmer's great memoir of the mistakes he made in raising his son Jeffrey.

Our fight was ostensibly about the car. We have an old beater that I let Sam drive whenever he wants, although because I pay for the insurance, I have some leverage. It's a good deal for him. But I had taken away his car privileges earlier that week because he'd been driving recklessly, hit a curb going 20 and destroyed the front tire. So he felt mad and victimized to begin with, my huge, handsome, brown-eyed son. And actually, so did I. That morning, I asked him to wash both cars, as partial payment for the tire I'd had to buy. It was a beautiful sunny day, and he had other plans, which I made him postpone. Then, with perhaps the tiniest bit of sanctimony, I went for a walk with the dog, to let him work in peace. When I got back, though, the cars were still gauzy with dirt.

I mentioned this, as nicely as possible. "I washed them," Sam said, defiantly. I called him a liar. He produced two filthy washrags: "I'm not a liar," he said. "I just did a lousy job."

And I lost my mind. I slapped him across the face, for the first time in our lives. He didn't flinch and, in fact, barely seemed to register it. He gave me a flat, lifeless look, and I knew I was a truly doomed human being, and that neither of us could ever forgive me.

Then I grounded him for the night.

I felt I had no choice. Slapping him did not neutralize his culpability: It simply augmented mine. He looked at me with scorn. "I don't care what you do or don't do anymore," he said. "You have no power over me."

This is not strictly true: He has little money of his own, and loves having our old car to tool around in. Also, he realizes that families are not democracies, and he's smart enough to obey most of the time.

We stood in our driveway looking daggers at each other. The tension was like the air before lightning. The cat ran for her life. The dog wrung her hands.

I felt a wall of tears approaching the shore and, without another thought, got in my car and left. Nothing makes me angrier and more hopeless than when someone robs me of my reality by trying to gaslight me. I started to cry, hard, and not long after, to keen, like an Irish woman with a son missing at sea.

Recently I have begun to feel that the boy I loved is gone, and in his place, a male person who so pushes my buttons, with his moodiness, scorn and flamboyant laziness. People tell me that the boy will return, but some days that is impossible to imagine. And we were doing so well for a while, all those years until his junior year of high school, when the plates of the earth shifted inside him. I've loved and given him so much more than I ever have anyone else: And I'll tell you, a fat lot of good it does these days.

I should not have been driving, but since I'd restricted Sam's driving privileges, I couldn't make him leave. So I drove along, a bib of tears and drool forming on my T-shirt. Why was he sabotaging himself like this, giving up his weekend, his freedom and his car, and for what? Well, I sort of knew the answer. This is what teenagers have to do, because otherwise they would never be able to leave home and go off to become their own people. Kids who are very close to their parents often become the worst shits, and they have to make the parent the villain, so they can break free without it hurting too much. Otherwise, the parent would have to throw rocks at them to get them out of the house. It would be like in "Sky King," when the family has nursed the wounded animal back to health, and tries to release it back into the wilds, shooing it away -- "Go ahead, Betty! You can fly!"

So even though, or because, I understood this, I cried harder as I drove than I have since my father died, 27 years ago. God invented cars to help kids separate from their parents. I have never hated my son so much as when I was teaching him to drive. There, I've said it, I hated him. Sue me: It's actually legal, because sometimes he hates me too. He always drove too fast, cut corners too sharply, whipping around in the '95 Honda like it was a souped-up Mustang convertible. But still somehow a few weeks ago, he tricked the California Department of Motor Vehicles into issuing him a license. I hate the way most young men drive, so cocky, reckless, entitled. I suppose they hate the way I drive too -- careful, poky, all but shaking my puny fist at them as they pass.

I started letting Sam drive himself to and from school, which I loved, and to his appointments, events, practices. I also ordered him to make emergency runs for milk, and ice cream sundaes. But then watching him leave recently, I saw him peel around the corner nearest to our home, endangering himself and anyone who might have been on the street. I threatened to take away his driving privileges, and he slowed down, for two days. Then he sped up when he thought I wasn't looking, and lost his rights for a week.

What has happened? Who is this person? He used to be so sane and positive, so proud of himself. He used to call himself Samwheel when he was 5, because while he couldn't pronounce Samuel, he knew it was a distinguished name. He used to care about everything, but now he mostly only cares about his friends, computers and our animals. He threatens to run away because he wants his freedom, and the truth is he is too old to be living with me anymore -- he wants to have his own house, and hours, and life. He wants to stay out late, and sleep in, and smoke, and because I won't let him do any of this on weekdays, he sees me as a prig, or a dominatrix, John Ashcroft, or Ann Coulter.

Next page: I recognized that the things I hated about my parents were going to be things my son hated about me some day