Last week Olof’s sister had a birthday and we were over at her house for coffee. In addition to family, she had invited a friend who has four small children, which meant that together with our three and her own three, there were ten kids under the age of ten there. All ten of them were awake and active, but there was a surprisingly low-key feel about the afternoon. The noise level was far below what I would have expected and, in the main, everyone played together nicely. In fact, I think the most fuss was made by Lydia–the eldest by close to two years–who started her I’m-bored-can’t-we-go-soon routine pretty early on.

I know she’s at a stage that all kids go through sooner or later, but, like so many other things, it does seem to me that she’s rather on the “sooner” end of the spectrum. I think I must have been thirteen or fourteen before I started disrupting family get-togethers with all the conspicuous sighing and slouching. I can remember vividly how it felt to sit at one end of my grandma’s couch listening to the grown-ups go on and on (and on and on and on) about So-and-so Smith who’d just bought the Johnson place — “You know,” my grandma would prompt my grandpa. “What-his-name Smith’s son, the one who married the Jones girl?” My grandpa would nod, his memory apparently refreshed, and my grandma would turn her attention to my mom and my uncle. “That Jones girl, her younger brother was between you two kids in school. He had that no-good sorrel gelding, remember? The one he wanted you to train to barrel race?” And so it went, ad nauseum, and no amount of ostentatious weight-shifting and glancing pointedly at my mom would make it end one second sooner. Oh, the misery.

Though she’s still a few months away from turning ten, Lydia is already entering that awkward in-between stage when she doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere except with her own circle of friends (and sometimes, not even there). From an adult’s perspective I can see that it will only get worse from here and I can’t help wishing I had some magic charm that would spare both of us the pain. Like my own mother all those years ago, however, I don’t have any choice but to put on my waders and slog through as best I can. And in the long run I am confident, that like me and my own mother, Lydia and I will make it through her adolescence and emerge stronger on the other side. I have to say, though, that the other side seems impossibly far away sometimes.