My twin daughters turn 13 next month. Considering the fact that I am very much, at 50½ years of age, still on intimate terms with my door-slamming, cider-drinking, self-loathing inner teenager, the next few years are going to be an interesting adventure.
I’m not scared, well, maybe just a little, of having two teenagers in the house – three if you count my inner one. Wary is more the word. When I mention their age to those parents who have survived and who are now out the other side of the much-demonised teenage years, they look at me sympathetically, or with outright concern. Part of me would like to go to sleep and wake up in five years’ time when the worst of it is over and my daughters like me again or at least vaguely tolerate me. Another part of me thinks it’s all going to be fine. They won’t be as bad or as mad or as sad as I was as a teenager, I keep thinking. They can’t possibly be.
The plan was both terrifyingly daunting and achingly simple when they were born in Holles Street in the middle of that month of cherry blossoms and blue skies. The plan was: “keep them alive”. That remained the plan until we’d got the hang of being parents which took a few years. Then the plan changed, it became “don’t let anything too terrible happen to them”.
I was the parent who felt this fear most keenly. In a series of unfortunate events, bereavements, near-death experiences and other traumas, by the age of 13 I had been through the wringer in a variety of ways. I wanted none of that for them.
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I'm fully aware from previous experiences that looking in their eyes will be like looking in mine back then. No wonder I am wary
With each landmark year I breathed a sigh of relief. I watched them closely as they turned eight, remembering the year my father died by suicide. I looked at them and glimpsed myself properly, as though in technicolour, for the first time at that age and grieved for him and for myself in a new way. I watched them again a few years later when they were the same age that I was the year I nearly drowned and the person I was swimming with never came back out of the water.
Other unfortunate events are buried deeper, so deep as to be unsayable, and when they turn 13 I know they will resurface. I’m fully aware from previous experiences that looking in their eyes will be like looking in mine back then. No wonder I am wary.
It’s worth pointing out that all of these unfortunate events happened in the days before mindfulness and Bressie and the normalisation of therapy and counselling and ads on the radio that tell you talking about your problems is a good thing. Talking about your problems is a relatively new invention. In the old Ireland, you just pushed it all down, carried on and hoped for the best. This strategy worked for a few lucky people; it was a disaster for the rest of us.
Apart from the small matter of a global pandemic, my two children have not had to suffer a series of unfortunate events, but they are growing up and away from us. I don’t yet know what challenges this is going to bring. But I do know I did not expect a Pixar movie on Disney Plus to arrive, full of cherry blossoms coincidentally, to help me with all of this at exactly the time when I needed support. And yet that is exactly what happened.
Turning Red tells the story of Mei, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl in Toronto who is grappling with growing up. Mei is not a bit like me at 13. She’s high-achieving and mother-obeying in a way I never was. But the message at the heart of Turning Red – that growing up is a beast – spoke loudly to me and will resonate not just with those going through puberty but with anybody, of any gender, who remembers that tumultuous time.
It’s a magical, allegorical movie. We meet Mei at a significant turning point in her young life: when she gets excited or experiences any high emotion, she turns into a huge, furry red panda. At first Mei is desperate to hide this highly unusual aspect of herself but as she gets used to her inner-panda it begins to bring her joy. Of course, the red panda is also a metaphor for menstruation, a subject which is dealt with beautifully by writer and director Domee Shi, who also happens to be the first woman to direct a Pixar movie.
Instead of demonising the adolescent journey, the movie shines a light on the beauty and vibrancy and uniqueness of teenagers coming into their own
You might be familiar with such menstrual euphemisms such as: “I’ve got the painters in;” “The pitch is waterlogged;” “ My visitor has arrived;” “I’m in me flowers” but Turning Red brings us another one: “Your red peony has bloomed.” I had tears in my eyes as I watched periods and pads and tampons referenced in such an everyday way in a mainstream children’s movie.
Apart from the period talk, and without spilling any spoilers, the movie is ultimately about the importance of coming to terms with our inner red pandas. Everyone’s panda is different, but instead of demonising the adolescent journey, the movie shines a light on the beauty and vibrancy and uniqueness of teenagers coming into their own and embracing their inner-monster, however scary that might be for some.
Turning Red is also an excellent film to watch in the run-up to Mother’s Day on Sunday. It’s one of the best illustrations of the complexities of the mother-daughter dynamic I’ve ever seen.
“I’m finally figuring out who I am,” Mei tells her mother in one of the final scenes. “But I’m scared it will take me away from you.”
“The further you go, the prouder I’ll be,” Mei’s mother responds. At which point I cried again obviously. Hot, hopeful tears.