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Susan Hodara
Sofie's Boots

These days, she seems to lack the conviction to push the words from her throat, so they slide out through nearly unmoving lips in a monotone that can barely be heard. Her ice-blue eyes slip from sparkling to expressionless, from deeply empathetic to cold and cruel. Dressed most often in paint-spattered clothing, her jeans slung low on her narrow hips, my teenage daughter, Sofie, seesaws between the exuberance of her younger years, the zest with which she once embraced the moments of her days, and a more recent, more dominant mix of defiance, cynicism, and exhaustion.

She is still beautiful, her skin pale, peachy, and lightly freckled, her face open and wise beneath her golden-brown hair. But adolescence has lodged itself within her, throwing her off balance, leaving her aloof and often sad. To her, I have lately become inadequate, clueless, or simply annoying. She is barely seventeen, drowning in demands from school, friends, and too much to do in too little time, drained by the taste of disappointment seeping into her days. She has the world ahead of her, but she rarely believes it anymore.

Which is meant to explain why I spent nearly $300 on her birthday present, why I abandoned my plans and rearranged my Sunday morning when she bounded cheerily into my bedroom and said: “Mom, get ready! Let’s go get the boots!”…

Excerpted from I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
Copyright 2005 by Susan Hodara