Today's Drama....
 Life in a small town affords us many luxuries, not the least of which is watching the lives of our friends and neighbors unfold in front of us.  Sometimes it is delicious, like a juicy peach in height of season.  Sometimes it is horrifying, like a car accident occuring while you watch.

I have a best friend.  Well, I am blessed to have a number of close friends, but my best friend is a man I have known since junior high school.  We have been through a lot in our 30+ years of friendship.  We have seen two marriages dissolve, watched our children grow, survived careers, survived lay offs, survived illnes, survived....that about sums it up...survived.  We have not always been easy with each other.  There are times that our relationship becomes strained.  We are emotional and hot-tempered, raised with similar beliefs in similar backgrounds.  I love him dearly and cherish our friendship, even with the price we sometimes pay to keep it.

My best friend has three children.  And today's drama is about his eldest, a daughter, who will be twenty this summer.  She is no longer a child.  His daughter, K, is beautiful and intelligent and talented and fierce. Lately, she has spiraled out of control, dropping out of college and making decisions that will change the rest of her life. In the past, when something worried me about my best friend's children, we talked about it.  Sometimes, we argued about it. I always felt that it was part of my role as his friend and confidante.  The last time, though, did not go so well.  What father wants to hear icky stuff about his daughter?  Even from me?  And today's icky stuff is worse.  Much worse.  Today, I am truly worried about her safety, her physical well-being.  I do not want to be attending a funeral - ever - for this child.

What do you owe your friends?  What are the rules about this sort of thing?  She is an adult.  What do I owe her father, her mother, herself?  Anything? Everything?

I can hear his silence now, even before I begin.  I can hear his helplessness.  That may be the crux of my dilemma.  He is truly helpless and my heaping on that helplessness will do no favors to anyone.

Yet, that feels cowardly. Am I dodging a responsbility?

Being a parent is messy.  Being a friends is messy.  All relationships are messy.  Knowing this does not make it easier.  

Hi!

There I am, that's me up there...Mama Jen.  Rocking the t-shirt that my kids gave me for mother's day a few weeks ago.

I want to blog.  That's the title of this blog and that's what I want to do.  I want to say something...throw those collected somethings out to the far reaches of the internet and see what comes back at me.

There are lots of mother's blogs.  Perhaps I'm different, perhaps I'm not.  My children are semi-grown.  Teenagers.  The words conjures all kinds of horror.  Ear-splitting, stupid music.  Terrible temper tantrums.  Struggles for independence.  Doors left open, lights left on, refrigerators empty.  And all of this is true, sometimes.  And sometimes, not.  Sometimes it means long talks at the kitchen table or your child discovering the music of Kansas and Motley Crue's "Smoking in the Boys Room" video on Youtube.  It can even mean that once in awhile, you get to be the cool mom.

My teenagers are boys.  They are cranky and smelly.  They don't pick up and they yell.  A lot.   But their hormonal swings are, I hear, less severe than those of the teenage daughters of my friends.  Their drama is less...dramatic.  I hear.   I'm still not sure about that.  They love their mama and aren't afraid to show it.  I think this too, is different than their female counterparts.  Again, I'm not sure.

All of the kids, mine and the ones I've collected, call me Mama Jen.  It's what I do.  I mother.  All of them.  I take them in and feed them and let them sleep over when their homes are too much.  I wash their clothes, sign them up for memberships at the Y and worry about them.  The collected "them" are about 9 different teenage boys.  There are girls too, but for some reason, they need me less.  Or I need them less.  I'm not sure which.  They call me Mama Jen too.

So this blog will be about them.  Their struggles, what they need, what I see....and hopefully, when I write it all down, I will be able to see how best to help them.