London - Deep in my heart I knew this moment was coming.
Our 11-year-old, Gracie-in-the-middle, as we used to call her until the fourth baby arrived, has suddenly discovered the parent-pounding power of loud, pre-teen female fury.
I am no longer ‘Mom’. This week I have become ‘she’ - that easily dismissed, non-person with the same status at home as our neglected rescue hamster, Walter White.
This childhood journey from ‘mumma’ (her first word), through ‘mommy’ to ‘mom’ and finally ‘she’ is bruising and oh-so-humiliating. One minute you’re a hero, worshipped with the adoration of a mega celebrity: Madonna, say, in the Nineties. The next moment you’re regarded as an acutely embarrassing figure of fun: Madonna, say, in the Noughties.
The ‘she’ word is predictable, of course, especially because, as the second daughter, she’s already witnessed an elder sister on the threshold of teenage independence.
So now I’m caught in two swirly clouds of unspoken fear: my maternal fear of letting go and the dreadful things I imagine will happen to her if I do, and her unadmitted fear of the adolescent unknown.
For some reason, this fear manifests as a series of illogical arguments about the silliest things. Socks have suddenly become a metaphor for growing up in our house, and this week I found myself in a hail of verbal Gracie bullets as I put on my dressing gown.
‘I have no socks,’ she says crossly, ambushing me in the bathroom.
‘You do have socks - everyone has socks,’ I tell her.
‘Why do you keep losing my things? I have no jumper.’
‘Don’t be absurd. It’s on your bed,’ I reply.
This testy volley of missing clothing accusations goes on for some time, like a particularly boring episode of Crimewatch. Recently, this has happened almost every day before school.
Sadly it culminates in me losing my patience/temper (I’m only human for goodness sake, as my toddler used to point out).
I pull her socks from the drawer and hurl them around her bedroom like a lunatic. This is not the kind of parent (or indeed human) I fantasised I would be. A frazzled, crazy-eyed, fortysomething resembling Helena Bonham Carter in full Bellatrix mode.
‘See,’ I bellow. ‘Socks everywhere! Enough socks for ten centipedes.’
‘Those are not the socks I want. They don’t fit,’ Gracie responds. The voice of reason, arrives to referee. ‘She,’ Gracie yells at her Dad, ‘has thrown all my clothes around my room. Look what she has done. Now I can’t find my jumper in this mess because of her.’
‘Don’t call me “she”,’ I say, before dramatically adding: ‘Everything you like is now banned. For a week.’
This illogical Victorian revenge threat is one I cannot possibly see to fruition, but in that heated moment it hands me back a tiny speck of power.
I retire to the top of the stairs, the place I go for a silent scream, and sit there contemplating making a ‘Reward Offered’ poster for the return of my sanity. Logically, I know the behaviour of my ‘wannabe adult’ is all about seeing how much I really do love her and to what lengths I will go to prove this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to absorb.
Gracie and I were inseparable during her colic-filled early days through to her lively first days at school. I clung to her, sensing a similarity of personality I suspect. But I fear this new emotional mortal combat requires a thicker skin than any woman has.
So I have put Mr Candy on Gracie duty. He can handle sockgate from now on, for Dads rarely become ‘he’ to their daughters.
I turn my melancholy attention to my still loving son, aged eight, and our littlest one, Mabel, nearly four. I may have started to lose the first two, but this 4ft-high female is still mine. I treasure her spontaneous cuddles. I can only hope Gracie still remembers we were once like this.
And in my head, the lyric of an old Glen Campbell song plays. ‘I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time.’ In my heart, I do believe that maybe this is how my pre-teen feels about me underneath it all. I have to, don’t I?
* Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.
Daily Mail