Parenting Is Loving Without Controlling

8th Grade Grad Dresses, First Loves & Letting Go

I’m sitting on a faux leather bench outside the changeroom of Envy + Grace - a store I have never heard of, but have been assured by a group of 13-year-old girls in the know, that it is legit.

My daughter and I are in the middle of a suburban mall, and the bench on which I sit is trying its best to accommodate the line 10-deep of mothers and grandmothers, waiting for their teen girl to come out twirling so we can ooh-ahh.

It’s 8th grade grad dress shopping day for my eldest, who looks like a Dutch Rembrandt painting brought to life, with porcelain skin, freckles, and stunning strawberry blonde hair, has brought an armload of jewel-toned options, mostly short, tight, and sleeveless.

A far cry from my own elder millennial experience, for which I wore a butter yellow linen dress from J Crew, with a shirred torso, and rust-red flip flops.

Back in 1993, prepping for the King Lear Senior Public 8th grade graduation, I feel lucky just to go; my stepmother is all kinds of strict (and unnecessarily cruel), and has told me only on the day of that I’ll be allowed to attend the school dance after the ceremony.

And thank God, because I have been waiting to dance with Mike McCutchen for months.

In case you’ve forgotten, 1993 is a blur of oversized t-shirts with plaid pyjama pants and Simple clogs. Blink-182, The Cranberries, and Red Hot Chili Peppers dominate our mixed tapes, and skater culture reigns.

Fresh off the success of SNL and then Wayne’s World, Mike Myers is our current King of Comedy, and we are eagerly awaiting the release of So I Married an Axe Murderer - the movie that will serve up the stream of one-liners that will become my entire personality for the next four years.

My classmate Mike McCutchen, in his nylon Kansas City Chiefs jacket with matching ball cap and braces, not only kinda looks like Mike Myers - but can do a dead ringer impression that makes me laugh, hysterically, for days.

When we eventually get to the grad dance, we wait it out until our generation’s version of Stairway to Heaven: Lightning Crashes, by LIVE, as the final closing song. I have a permanent memory burned into my brain of Mike’s hands on my linen-clad waist, and I am happy.

Mike and I go on to flirt and group-hang for 9th grade, get a job at the same (amazing) toy store in 10th, and finally start dating in 11th; he is the first true love of my life.

This guy can make me laugh like no other. We have all the same friends, and we just love being together. In the summer when he’s done baseball practice, he picks me up after my closing shift at Dairy Queen - where I bike to after my day shift at the toy store - and we take the long way for him to walk me home, stopping to make out on the train tracks where he feels me up under my red and Blizzard spotted DQ t-shirt.

Things progress throughout our year of dating, and ultimately lead to us walking to his house one afternoon when his parents aren’t home, and I’ve lied to my parents about where I’ll be. Before he left the house to come meet me, he has lit at least a hundred candles in his basement.

I am talking Michael-and-Holly-proposal-scene from The Office level candle lighting.

To this day, I am mystified as to how he didn’t light the damn house on fire, leaving them burning and unattended for as long as he did. #firehazard

To my 16-year-old self, though, all I see is my first taste of romance. I am hooked, and after a few Green Day songs, we decide to “go all the way.”

Not unsurprisingly, we break up soon after, following the cliché script of teenage lust. And while it is a clean break with me switching schools for better academic options - and him dating someone who almost immediately gets pregnant within months of our breakup - Mike McCutchen will still hold court as the first true love of my life.

So when I get a DM on Instagram in 2023 from a girl I used to know in high school, telling me that Mike McCutchen has passed, I am gutted. The timing is bizarre, as it coincides almost exactly with this 8th grade gard dress shopping trip for my sweet daughter.

I knew statistically that after Mike became a teenage dad, failed out of comedy writing, opened a bar in our hometown, struggled with addiction and substance abuse in his adult years, that he probably wouldn’t be long for this world. But for that to be the true reality? To actually get that news? On Instagram? At age 42?

I was heartbroken.

Mike and I hadn’t seen each other or spoken since the end of 11th grade, and both went on to have our own lives, but after being such a huge part of my early teen and formative years, it honestly felt like a part of me died. A piece of my own history that no one else shared broke off and went into the abyss, leaving me with only the memories of a time, and a person, that no longer exists.

Have you ever felt that?

I got thinking that my own memories of these life and childhood milestones were so fresh, so viscerally embodied for me still - 20 years later…now here I am at the mall with my eldest, soon to be followed by my two youngest (twins), starting out on their own very real paths to adulthood.

What will that look like for them?

It starts with the emerald green (and just a hint of shimmer) number my daughter chooses, and explodes in my anxious imagination with who will they meet?
What choices will they make?
How will they decide?
Will they feel loved?
Who will they lose?
What trauma will that cause?
What struggles will they face?
Which hurdles will they overcome?
Will they tell me?
Will they ask for help and let me in?
Will they share the highs as well as the lows?
Have I done enough to prepare them?
Have I cultivated enough independence and self-esteem to know their worth?
To love - and like - themselves?
To do the right thing?
Will they be ok?

Being a parent is hard; understatement of the year.

And no one can quite prepare you for what effectively becomes a life sentence of caring for another - or in my case, another three - and the emotional toll that can take.

I wrote in my second book, ALONE: The Truth and Beauty of Belonging, that I genuinely believe we each have our own individual path that we follow. Sometimes we meet up with another, and it feels like we are on the same path - when really, it’s just that our paths are temporarily superimposed on one another.

We talk a lot about what leadership looks like in the context of work, and nowhere near enough about what leadership looks like in the context of family; as parents, and subsequent leaders of our families, our job is neither to control nor acquiesce. Barbara Coloroso describes in her iconic book Kids are Worth It!, three styles of parenting:

The Brick Wall - do as I say because I say so
The Jellyfish - do whatever you want until it pisses me off, and then I sting
The Backbone - firm, stable, and supportive - with lots of flexibility.

It’s not a huge surprise which one we strive for (at home and at work, quite frankly).

Our job is to be a guide to life, accompanying and supporting our children along their path, teaching them about potential obstacles to avoid, while being there to help them through it when those obstacles are unavoidable.

So whether it’s being there to choose (and pay for, lolz) that special dress, to shut the hell up and listen, to take them to the ER when a party goes south, to snuggle on the couch or bake cupcakes when they want that, drive them everywhere, or simply be present, we have to be mindful that their path is just that - their path.

They will have their own version of love, loss, and Mike McCutchen, and we can be there to support, but not control. Exactly as it’s supposed to unfold.

LeisseWilcox.com | @leissewilcox