I wrote this for my son who just turned 16. Its about my life and his. This is my first time posting a vulnerable piece like this, so it makes me nervous, but I wanted to share. Thank you to 
When I was 16
I was in Germany at first, working in a Baskin Robbins and listening to Nirvana and Prince. I was in my room, drawing, standing on a chair so I could stick my head out the skylight in the slanted roof and look at the moon. I hated how big the earth was, how far away my friends were. I would try to feel them looking at the moon, because we could do that at the same time; we didn’t have the internet. We just knew. I would sneak downstairs and climb out a window in the night and walk down the path till I could sit in the tall grass, trying to get closer to the moon. The houses were made of concrete bricks and stucco, and even though they were relatively new, Germany, scarred from Hitler, still outfitted its houses with blackout shades, on the outside, in the case of war.
My stepfather called me a three-year-old, pointed his knobby finger into my chest, and took away all my stuff. Even my blankets. He said, for teens everything is a privilege, and I had no rights. So I had to earn everything I had. One time I was so sick, and I had no blankets and they treated me like I was faking it to get the blankets. I remember sitting dizzily on the stairs, begging. He often picked our dog up by the scruff of her neck and punched her. This man gave me my first experiences of feeling hate. But the dog would come and sit close to my side. She would come with me when I wandered around the hillside pining for the moon. She taught me dog love. When I was an adult I brought that same dog to Montana. She died here when you were in my womb.
When I was 16, I was reading “1984,” just like you. I was reading it in dystopian conditions. We rode a bus onto the air force base every day to go to school, and the soldiers checked our IDs. I could see the fighter jets taking off from our base to Iraq. On TV we could watch them bombing. They checked the underside of the school bus for explosives. The soldiers came and got ice cream from me at my first job on the base. I skipped school often. I hated my English class, just like you. On my own I read Kafka, Burroughs, Douglas Adams, Anais Nin, Rolling Stone, Vogue, Interview, Spin. I tore the pages from the magazines and painted pictures and plastered my walls with it all.
When I was 16 I moved back to the US. I experienced culture shock. The dirty streets of the Twin Cities. The giant warehouse grocery stores. The very sad lack of decent cheese, chocolate, and bread. I wrote poems and rode around on public transit and hid from my family. I sat in coffee shops for hours and skipped school. Home life became a confusing mess of chaos that I can’t really remember clearly. At age 17, I became homeless for a while, and was sheltered on many couches, including this little apartment, by a 24-year-old man who never touched me, never tried to. He had no food in his apartment, just rice. I went to the malls and took ketchup and mustard packets and brought them home for my rice. I rode on the back of his motorcycle and ate grilled cheese sandwiches at his work when he was around. To this day I am so grateful to him. I remember so many grey days filled with trauma, blanking out, falling in love, confusion, panic. His home was a respite from that.
And now you are 16, and seem so young to me. But I know this is the beginning of your being - where you learn to find your spirit, and your path. I have been a little terrified of this time, because I fear that I won’t be able to safely guide you through it. I had to do so much of my growing all on my own, and I ended up in bad situations sometimes.
I will always see your talents, even when you are not sure you have any. I will always be your mom above being your friend. I will always love you more than anyone who isn’t a mother could ever understand. My love will urge me to fight for you, shape you, and protect you. My love will make me annoyed when you aren’t responsible, and proud when you are kind.
You bring to me a great gift of your mellow nature, your thoughtfulness, your Aquarius ways. You bring to me a creativity that is so much like mine, but all brand new, and young.
I am sorry that we haven’t had as good a life as I wish we could have. I wish I could buy you nice things, and take you on cool trips and get you into a good school. But I am proud of what I have been able to provide. Me, the girl who was homeless at 17. The woman who fled abuse when you were ten. The one who has had to make myself from nothing, over and over again. We are safe, I own our house, we are fed, there’s no abuse, no drama. You aren’t running away, you aren’t on drugs, you aren’t homeless, you aren’t lost. You feel sheltered, and it annoys you, but because you feel that way, I know I have done okay so far with the 16 years I have had this job.
I love you, my sweet sixteen.
Love,
Mom
(me at 16)
(my son now)
(my dog in the story)