London - With regret, I have to inform you of our recent loss.
The adorable, chubby, red-headed baby girl we once worshipped with the unconditional love only innocent new parents know, has departed. I finally said goodbye to her this weekend across the crowded plaza of a shopping centre as she disappeared alone into the throng.
“Later,” she muttered.
My maternal heart fell through my boots and shattered into tiny pieces. She didn’t even look back.
To coin a phrase from Gracie-in-the-middle’s book “of unusual thoughts” (a real thing, she’s an eccentric ten-year-old). “My world stopped turning but everything else kept moving.”
Tell me, why did I agree to let my 12-year-old meet a friend to go shopping without us for the first time? Was it the persistent “tween” nagging? Did the guilt of a busy week at work - meaning I had less energy for our late-night chats - lead me to weakly opt for giving her this “treat” instead?
And why didn’t I realise what a pivotal rite-of-passage “play date” this was?
Wearing mascara, tight black jeans, ankle boots and carrying a handbag - yes, a handbag - she shuffled off, abandoning me like one of her once-beloved soft toys, leaving me as lonely as Monty The Penguin before he finds a mate in that John Lewis Christmas advert. The memory of her as my little girl was lost to bygone days of milky cuddles and tiny breaths.
Anyway, as she headed off to gain vital life skills, (40 minutes looking at nail varnish - I know, I spied on her for a bit) I learned ever more useful things about being the mom of a soon-to-be-teen.
Firstly, you may as well hand over your pay cheque to The Body Shop as soon as the tween steps inside a shopping centre, because your bathroom is about to be filled with ridiculous brightly coloured soap which goes unused.
Budget, what budget? You will get a heartfelt text ten minutes after drop-off asking for a top-up. Be strong. It is a fib.
Going through a list of what not to buy because “you already have ten of them at home” is a waste of your time. Ditto telling her to wear something with sleeves. As soon as you leave her she will take off her jumper and shove it in her bag to reveal what looks suspiciously like a crop top.
You won’t recognise this top because it will have been smuggled into your house on another occasion via the thriving crop-top black market which seems to exist among pre-teen girls. She will be wearing the thing you mistakenly thought was a jumper for a dwarf Chihuahua when you saw it scrunched up on her bed half an hour ago.
For as much as you want her to leave the house dressed like Kate Middleton, she wants to go out looking like Rihanna. It’s an argument you are never going to win - just like bedtime.
No matter how many times I tell her nothing interesting happens after midnight, she still believes a daring world of secret grown-up stuff is going on behind her back. Most importantly, moms, while you may know all her friends’ nicknames you must never use them when you collect the shoppers to taxi them home. The look of horror on her face when I did this will haunt me. I may as well have asked the duo if they knew how babies were made, it was that embarrassing.
And make sure you brush up on phrases from the teenage dictionary of sarcasm for the journey, because any comment you make about the variety of ill-advised purchases will only go to further prove you are a complete nitwit.
This growing up has happened so quickly. Not a minute ago we were visiting this same shopping centre to be fleeced out of the kids’ inheritance at Build-a-Bear.
Nowadays, I hold my youngest child’s hand with a vice-like grip in this crowded mall -so scared am I of losing her. Yet on Saturday, I had to let my eldest one go.
And the feeling of seeing her wander off was no less terrifying than it would have been if I had let her little three-year-old sister disappear among the strangers.
I relayed all this to Mr Candy when I got home. “She’ll be fine,” he replied, firmly resisting any drama. “Now, did you get any Christmas shopping done?” - Daily Mail
* Lorraine Candy is editor in chief of Elle magazine.