The advent of the Deep-teens

Well, it happened just like we were told it would. We blinked our eyes and suddenly our kids are all kind of….old. They just slipped outside the edges of magic old, the kind where there is still life in the coals, but that they have to be stoked more now.

We’re in the Deep-teens.

Part abyss, part entertainment centre filled with things we don’t understand, a whole lot of open fridge doors and empty food packaging, the Deep-teens is a bit disorienting.

My youngest, at a newly minted fifteen years of age, is the youngest of all of his cousins and his two stepsiblings, the eldest being my twenty year-old nephew. They’re still playful, but I think maybe it’s that natural place where youth begin to lean away like plants towards another sun, ready for the nourishment of new people in particular. I remember perfectly well the importance of friends at that age (my best friends are still the loves of my live), and give our current circumstances, when they lean away and towards, life during a pandemic is something of a ticking clock, one whose time we can’t yet tell, that is supposed to chime when they can truly be together again.

I long for its chiming, and every day I contemplate and understand the Roaring Twenties in a way we never imagined we would have in common.

Our Deep-teens, who swam in the worlds of the internet, yearn for each other’s company, finding the expanse of cyberspace leaving them a bit like the Major Toms of today.

But, I digress. This column isn’t about doom and gloom; this is about the tiny doors of hope.

Instead of counting the minutes, we can count the days, and one of the fun ways of celebrating the season of giving (whatever your celebratory practices are), that adds a bit of magic beyond the Deep-teens’ love of gifts that consist of gift cards, electronics and straight cash is the Advent calendar.

As soon as companies determine that something will sell, they’re likely to create it. While I’ll admit being inconsistent with the gifting of Advent calendars, we’ve had a few fun ones over the years, the most exciting being the Lego variety, creating a small holiday village scene by the time we were done. We’ve found the favourite candy-themed calendars, like Ferrero Rocher, and the standard, yummy little chocolate shapes variety that also does the trick.

With a little treat, joke, treasure hunt clue for something that won’t fit in the space provided, there is something magical about a countdown, and with a little effort it can suit the person it is being gifted to, even those in the Deep-teens.

Right now, not knowing what the holidays will be, finding a way to cause a little ripple effect of fun on the daily for the month of December means we’re not solely focused on the events to take place whenever we are celebrating whatever we celebrate, depending on the household.

A few years ago, during a very, very, very end of holiday season sale at a local hardware store, I scored two wooden Advent calendars with tiny doors revealing tiny cubby holes, ready for filling each year with some kind of fun.

I picked them up, but admittedly, I was stumped as to how to proceed without either breaking the bank, yet finding something interesting to place behind the 24 doors leading up to Christmas Day ( the celebration that our family practices). Admittedly those wooden Advent calendars have stayed boxed.

This year though, as we find ourselves with a clock that ticks but has no hands, we aren’t sure what time it is. We don’t know what will happen as the weeks progress, what we are leading up to.

In spite of not knowing the ‘time’, if we scratch our heads enough, we usually know the date, the day of the week. On December 1st, my boys will begin opening the calendars, finally unboxed.

I’ll have to place the items in each morning, as my eldest, swiftly nearing eighteen years of age, with his toddler’s heart and ambition, will definitely empty twenty-four days the minute my proverbial back is turned. It’ll be like remembering the Tooth Fairy every day. ( Note to self: set an alarm on your phone.)

Tiny figures, treats, notes indicating activities, like cookie-making or special hot chocolate, are on the roster. For my youngest, a message exchange with and then trip to Les 3 Fées gift shop in Lennoxville, means I have a collection of gemstones complete with their properties to add to his collection. (I suspect he won’t see this column, please help to keep the secret.)

While the Deep-teens definitely is a labyrinth for parents, it’s supposed to be. We don’t come out at the same place from this maze. We emerge in different places as different people. As parents we emerge slightly bewildered and looking at our watches uncertain how time has flown by while we were inside, and our young folk emerge on another floor, with a view of a horizonline that we are now too near-sighted for, where the new future lives, a world we don’t get to explore, because we’ve had our time there, with our other eyes open that slowly closed so that others could open as we move through the stages of our lives.

A collection of small doors feels a bit like the glimpses we get now, as we live through the Deep-teens – I’ll take every glimmer of magic and in the midst of the never-ending stories of snacks, laundry and asking ‘Did you brush your teeth? Did you put deodorant on?’ I will look for the new suns to lean my head towards, different from the ones before, varying in intensity and yet still nourishing in their light.

One day at a time.