Tiny Wolf Twiggy

Today it is raining. The sky looks like an ashtray. I feel like an ashtray. Grey, murky, lost. Today I grapple with acceptance, self-doubt, regret, and wreckage of the past. They all lie in rusty heaps piled way up high. You can find them in a junkyard in some nook in my brain. Beware of the guard dogs, they eat people for snack food.

In 2005 I signed (spiritually of course) a very sacred maternal contract which has changed my life forever. Today, I am exhausted, wondering what my life would be like if only I had just waited a little while longer to introduce Twiggy to the world. I signed a contract not really giving much thought about what it truly takes to raise a child into a magnificent human being. I signed it not realizing just what exactly I was committing to. I totally failed to read the fine print.

For me, being Twiggy's mom can at times feel like I am raising werewolf.  She is six and quite stunning for a little girl, so smart, curious and very bright. She is  very sensitive, yet extremely confident and strong willed. She can be quite pleasant, fun, and insanely amusing. Twiggy has an imagination that seems endless, her paintings and drawings rock my world, and so many people just adore her.

Twiggy likes a lot of cool things most six year old girls do not. She is  a fan of Joan Jett, David Bowie, and Lady Ga Ga. She even enjoys Star Wars and Anime films and cartoons.

Twiggy will play with dolls and make up and next she will put on a dress and go dig for worms.  She has often told me that she wants to be a Hair Stylist and a Fashion Designer when she grows up. Twiggy is indeed the most interesting and coolest little girl I know. I am proud that she is mine.

The ugly truth is, Twiggy seems to like the idea of being a Jedi, but the girl's got a serious taste for the Dark side. She is quite moody. She can be quite mean, nasty, and rude. She'll put that look on you like someone's friend was just sprayed in a drive by. Twiggy seems to be a bit like Teen Wolf,  being sweet and pleasant one moment and then wolfing out the next, not giving a rat's ass who's watching. She doesn't just get angry, she becomes enraged, sometimes destructive. She is like a 40 lb mini Tsunami. My biggest challenge is being her rock, even when she is calling me a "BIG JERK!"

Twiggy often forgets that I am "Mommy" and all sorts of words just fall out of the side of her little neck like a can of Spaghetti- Os. Her favorite words are "NO, I DON'T WANT TO!" I am really glad it's not 'FUCK YOU', although I do have this feeling that one day she will try it out being the punk-rock-rebel-anarchist she is. Twiggy will also wonder why she just woke up on the floor.

On Wednesday Twiggy had a play / DVD movie date with her cousin Jonah, who is also six. It was a total disaster.  Twiggy treated Jonah like a slave while she proudly took on the roll of the "Royal Princess of Hillsborough", sending him upstairs for her snacks and juice boxes. I quickly reminded her that she is not a princess but a young lady and that Jonah is her guest, not a servant. I also reminded her that she is quite capable of getting her own snacks and drinks.

Needless to say they barely even watched the movie. They seemed to like the idea of running up and down the stairs for a number of reasons like tattling, nagging me while cooking breakfast for dinner (which I almost burned), asking me 20 questions like "can I watch you burn dinner?", more tattling, asking permission to put something in the garbage, 20 more questions, even more tattling, and mooning each other.

My eggs got cold. After just a few bites I hear my name being screamed, and Jonah storms into the dining room looking like a wet otter. "Twiggy threw water on me!" he screamed. I was totally pissed.

Twiggy became enraged over a  water bottle that she did not want Jonah to have. She refused to "chill out" in the designated chill spot to pull herself together. Next she 'wolfed out', violently kicking and punching the basement door. With thunderous passion she roared "NO, I DON'T WANT TO!"

I expected to see the dead rise up from their graves and dance right on our porch from the shrillness of it all. I felt my only rational option was to hold her down, tell her I love her, and just breathe with her until she came back to this wacky fucking planet earth. I was exhausted, upset, wondering where I went wrong as a parent and as a caring human being trying to understand a little girl.

In all honesty, I myself feel like a teenager with adult obstacles, raising a little girl, striving to be a better mom than the one I had. I was not ready for this. I failed to read the fine print. Twiggy is here, ready or not.  Everything has changed. On the worst days it is very difficult to see how she has been such a blessing.

Sometimes I cry, wondering when Twiggy's real mother will arrive to finally take her home and then suddenly I get smacked with a massive sledgehammer as I think "Oh, wait. I'm her mother".