Parenting

Genre: Fiction,teens,Drama

Chapter 1: Even years after her shocking passing, Carmen frequently invades my thoughts. Sometimes, life is strange like that. How sometimes the most significant influences in life come from those who weren't necessarily in the spotlight.

I imagine Carmen as the mother I want to be when I'm an adult. Even though I will never be as carefree and joyful as she was, she is the mother I strive to be. Carmen raised her children with wildness and wonder; I did it with law and order. But when we were kids, Carmen was the mother we all wanted we had. It was the norm for teenage girls back then, and it still is today, that your mother would never truly comprehend you.Your own mother was never trendy.

However, Carmen was genuinely cool with both her own kids and us. The other mothers wore "mom jeans," which have dreadfully returned to fashion, and had classic 1980s hair that was poofy. Their Mary Kay-painted faces had pinched expressions. Not Carmen though. Her bell bottom pants were a throwback to the previous decade, and she wore her dark hair long and parted in the middle in hippy fashion. When she walked, it appeared as though the ground beneath her bare feet had been replaced by clouds. Her skin was always radiant and free of makeup. She possessed a strong presence. You felt enveloped in her beauty and joy the moment she entered a room. You instantly felt lighter.

Carmen did not bake cookies or fold laundry, and she had no rules. Instead, she allowed us to roller skate without knee protection in the basement, and she made pizza every week for dinner because all of her daughters enjoyed it. With chips, cookies, and every sugary cereal imaginable—as long as you preferred it dry, since there was no guarantee that milk was in the refrigerator—her cupboard was fully stocked, it was a child's paradise. It was amazing that none of them were obese, but Carmen's life philosophy included treating yourself to the foods you enjoy.

When we were old enough to be dropped off and at a time when we should have been ashamed to have a mother with us, she would pack us all into her Volvo station waggon and bring us to the pool during the summer of my twelfth year. I had evolved to the point where it would have been socially unacceptable for my mother to be lying next to me on a towel, let alone in a bathing suit.

But Carmen never made us feel bad. Even if her appearance played a role in some of it, it wasn't the only reason. The other mothers were older than her. Tally, the oldest, informed us that Carmen was just sixteen when she gave birth. There was no doubt that Carmen's life lacked men, at least not reliable guys. She frequently went on dates, dropping Tally and her sisters down at whoever's home while giving the parents a wink and saying, "Thanks very much, who knows what hour I might get home." Because she was too little to even understand judgement, Carmen didn't seem to notice the tight smiles or the critical eyes that we all observed.

Tally and her sisters had different fathers, which was obvious. They all resembled Carmen because of their short, tight bodies and long, dark hair, but other from Tally, none of them had the same striking, thickly lash brown-gold eyes. Despite the fact that divorce was becoming more common at the time and more of us had broken homes than not, having a child outside of marriage was still frowned upon. Three was unexpected.

I could see why Tally and her sisters didn't appear upset by it. Despite the fact that I had a wonderful father, Carmen's family seemed to lack nothing because it was so abundant and filled to the brim with love. Carmen had eliminated the necessity for my parents to maintain a good cop/bad cop parenting style balance. She simply and passionately loved. She showed us that she was our mother by listening to us and by encouraging us to do things that we would have normally rolled our prepubescent eyes at, like smell the flowers, lie down in the meadow next to her house, and stare up at the stars.

Under a full moon, we should jot down our dreams and burn them in a fire. She had some infectious quality about her.

We were all unaware of Carmen's occupation because she never seemed to be at work. I don't know what she did during the academic year, but over the summer, she spent almost all of her days with kids, whether it was at their house, the pool, or a campfire. She appeared to be as financially secure as any of our parents. She had a modest but lovely home with a swimming pool and a nearby acre of undeveloped land.

Like everyone else, Volvo went shopping at The Gap with her daughters. However, there were hints that she was wealthier than she appeared to be. The cleaning lady who came on Tuesdays, the dark green Jaguar parked in her garage.

I reasoned that she was unique and that there were plenty of possibilities in the rumour mill. Because the other parents just couldn't understand that we all wanted to be around her all the time because we liked her. They found it impossible to believe that a woman could become independently wealthy through moral means. Neither a family legacy nor wise investments could account for it. No,

She was probably a prostitute, they assumed. She kept her sugar daddy a secret. She had wed the father of one of her kids before divorcing him in exchange for a sizeable alimony.

None of that ever made any sense to me. I didn't care how or why Carmen had money because I was a young child.

Obviously, jealousy was the root of the rumours. Carmen shone out like a beacon in our sleepy village. She relaxed by the water in a red string bikini, her body showing no indications of