This past fall, my daughter started joining me on my evening runs occasionally. While I can run forever, I’m not fast. Keeping up with my little gazelle meant that I often asked her to do the talking and I’d try to keep up. During those runs, she mostly talked about school, alternating between rants about her awful social studies teacher and raves about her language arts teacher. Occasionally, we’d get into the sticky realm of the middle school girl social scene, but nothing major.
As winter took hold, our runs fell away.
Last week, I ran out of coffee, and invited her to walk with me to the coffee shop a mile away. She leapt at the opportunity, correctly inferring there’d be a hot chocolate in it for her. Two blocks from home, she asked with a quaver in her voice, “Mom, when you were in middle school, how did you deal with it when two friends were always fighting, and they blamed it on you?”
Ugh, it breaks my heart.
We talked about social dynamics of middle school girls, what I understand is going on (thank goodness I’ve read Queenbees and Wannabees), I complimented her for her social instincts in the situation, and told her I was honored that she was comfortable talking to me about it.
We got our drinks, tacked on an extra mile to our walk to finish our conversation, and started our weekend.
This weekend, it dawned on me I should invite her on another walk. Sure enough, the thoughts came together a few blocks from home, she started talking, and we talked about the currents and undercurrents of her life.