She is 14. "And it feels great," she announced on her birthday last Sunday. Then she busted out a few dance moves. They were very good dance moves and she couldn't stop smiling – partly because she was about to open up her presents, partly because of the sheer ecstasy of turning 14. Childhood is childish. It's kind of limited; parents set the rules. To be 14 is to view the world with wild surmise. Anything is possible; it's your life.
She is 14. "I feel older," she said. "Definitely older." She looked older, definitely. She looked very long, like stretched elastic, also like someone totally random who had walked into the room and started busting out dance moves – there are small, anxious moments in the day when I almost don't recognise her, when her face looks different, has changed its shape somehow. Every parent wonders how their kid is going to turn out but we all assume they'll always look the same. They don't, really. At best there's a strong resemblance.
She is 14 going on – how many parents have sons and daughters who are 14 going on 18, 19, 20 or somesuch debauched age? – 15. She has always taken her own sweet, slow time. For years and years we had a baby photo of her stuck with a magnet on the fridge. It was taken when she was just a few weeks old. She wore a blue knit top and was lying in her cot with her eyes open, looking sideways, with a small smile on her face. It was a portrait of someone with natural poise.
She is 14 and in Year 10. I asked her on Sunday what she wanted to happen this year and she mumbled something about doing well at school but I said I didn't ask her what she wanted to achieve in Year 10, I meant as someone who is now 14, on the second rung of the teenager ladder, moving on up, more sophisticated with every day, a lovely young girl with long hair and lots of friends who like to hang out and do stuff in the weekends, and she said: "I don't know." Then she busted out a few dance moves.
She is 14 and still sees some of the kids she's known since her first year at primary school. I was always fascinated by her friends when they were little and loved hanging around her classroom; I'd study their self-portraits pinned to the wall, paintings of smiling faces with a few lines of autobiography – their family, the things they liked. It was a territory of hope and beautiful innocence. I ran into one of her former classmates at the shops the other day. She said she suffered from depression, was into self-harming, and didn't have any money. I said, "I know you're not a kid anymore but can I buy you an icecream?" She said she'd prefer a bottle of V. It seemed to cheer her up.
