no teenage textbook to refer

As usual, she was late. This time, not by 15 minutes, but half an hour. It would have been 45 minutes, if I had not been the wiser and decided to be late as well - something that has become a habit for me in our appointments, fortunately. But when she came, she handed me this pretty package with a thank-you card, to thank me for all the gifts I'd bought for her and for taking care of her. Enveloped within a layer of bubble wrap was a pretty candle emanating a sweet vanilla essence. My heart melted and I didn't have the heart to look angrier. Truth was, I had already softened when she sms-ed me twice to say she would be late, and that she was sorry about it. As I thought back, these simple text messages were a great improvement from more than a year back when she didn't know how to apologise, not because she didn't feel bad about her tardiness, but because she didn't know how to say sorry. It was awkward, she said.

At the same time, while I thought it nice of her to buy something for me, it wasn't the anticipated sense of elation that I thought I would have felt at being "appreciated" by a teenager. Probably at the start of our relationship, my ego would have received a boost from such a gesture, since the premise of our relationship lay upon "me the so-called mentor helping her to grow". (I hate the word mentor by the way, because I'm not the perfect role model.) How our relationship has deepened, without me even knowing it. And the intertwined feelings that come along with it.

Just earlier, she declared that "my generation" and "her generation" are very different, and that because I'm from "my generation", I will not understand her 观念. I found myself reacting, with indignance. (Thanks to my lecturer's class on "checking your bodily cues", I realised myself getting agitated, and consciously cooled down.) I hope I got my point across because my spoken Mandarin sucks, especially in situations when you have to use very precise words to get your meaning across without inviting discord.

I'm beginning to worry for her, even if what she deals with are all the usual issues that teenagers face. In fact, the thought of how hard it is to parent teenagers popped into my head again. It never was a random thought, and never will be. I think teenagers are a real tough bunch to work with!