Glee

Jane,

I know that you’re angry with me because I won’t let you watch Glee or read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. In a few years, or maybe in a few decades you’ll recognize that I love you enough to hold your eleventh year sacred.

I know that other moms let their daughters watch Glee. I don’t care. I’m not raising Joan, Melissa or Sandy, I’m raising you, and Los Angeles can be a crummy place to raise a kid. I’m pretty sure that in high school at least one of your friends will get pregnant. You may or may not ever know about it. I’m fairly certain you’ll have at least one gay friend, and at least one more that you’ll be surprised to find out was gay.

Parents will divorce, some will remarry. Some have already been to rehab, still others will die.

There will be roadblocks to success, and ugly dead ends where you thought happiness would be. You will live Glee, you don’t need to watch it. Jane, all of this can wait. You’re eleven. Eleven is good.

These are your last minutes of childhood. You’re a blink away from being a teen, you’re the big kid at school, doting on the little ones in Kindergarten and tutoring the second grade girls. You’ll be a woman before you know it, and I’ll be damned if you can’t remember being a child because I allowed you to bypass it.

I don’t know how much you’ll remember being eleven. I’m guessing it will be easier to recall than being ten, nine or eight. I won’t let you look back on your childhood, and have it willfully peppered with adult activities.

So I’m sorry that you’ll have to be the only kid who doesn’t watch Glee, and the only girl who doesn’t read about homeless teenage prostitutes. Jane, I’ve been eleven. You’re not the only kid whose mom says no.

Love,
Mom