AINE O’CONNOR

Dream teen kids will always be my babies

ILOVED being 17. Janis Ian had kindly romanticised it for us in lyrics which, transcribed covertly in what should have been study time, made it sound like an age of tragic wisdom.

Tragic wisdom fitted with certain versions of ourselves, this was the 1980s after all. But better than learning any truth about beauty queens or inventing lovers on the phone, way better, I left school a few weeks after turning 17. I got my first non-babysitting job and then a place in college, I was grown up but not that grown up and it was a nice place to be.

I think of it now as my baby turns 17 on Wednesday. It’s a little different; they’re a year behind us in school so her 17 will be spent mostly studying and trying to manage the stress of that bloody monster the Leaving Cert. But it’s still pretty grown up, especially for a baby.

There’s something final about the milestones of our youngest children. I remember realising that I hadn’t fully registered when the Boychild stopped holding my hand because the Girlchild still did, but when she stopped I did feel the end of the era of having little kids. And while it’s nice to move with them, to enjoy the inevitable freedoms that come as your children grow — yes teenagers bring certain stresses but I certainly found having small children far more stressful than having teens — there is also a wisp of sadness.

When they’re little you’re their everything, you can solve their problems, wipe their tears. That they grow beyond it is inevitable and healthy and that wisp of sadness for times gone by is too. We can all move forward together. Though obviously she, and her bearded brother, will always be my babies.