As any mother of teens knows, it’s not really that easy to be the mother of teens. It takes a lot of pointless conversations conducted via text even when you’re in the same house where one person (me) does lots of talking about the perils of said teen’s choices (laying in bed until 2:30 pm, blowing off the lit paper until the day before it’s due, staring at TikTok until your eyeballs bleed). It takes a lot of deep breathing exercises, a lot of internal negotiations about choosing my battles, a lot of suppressed rage.
By the end of Molly Shannon’s memoir, Hello Molly, she is the mother of teens, and instead of the typical sort of stuff moms say about their teens (see above), her general attitude is unmitigated happiness, always. “Look at this,” she says, the awe evident in her voice when you listen to the audiobook, “We’re all alive!”
That’s an exceedingly low bar, and maybe I should try it. Molly has this attitude partly because she’s a buoyant soul, but also because when Molly was only 4, her mom died in a car accident along with her baby sister and her cousin. Her mother was not lucky enough to be alive to see Molly be a teen. This tragedy defines her, of course, and explains why she can find joy in simply being present to witness her children’s lives.
The silly unhinged characters she’s famous for on SNL made me think that maybe she wasn’t a deep thinker. I went into this audiobook expecting it to be a conventional transformed-by-loss-to-always-seek-out-joy type of thing. She delivers something a little more complicated and interesting.
I’m sure it’s good to read too, but why not let Molly tell it to you? Be prepared if you listen, because it’s written in a way that sometimes feels childlike. I even wondered if maybe she wrote this for a younger audience, then realized the tone was ideal. She’s very matter-of-fact in a way that seems naive but she’s scrappy, not simple. Probably thanks to living any child’s worst nightmare, she’s got a fearless capacity to just face the truth, always. She portrays her joy not as some brave choice to conquer sadness but instead the essence of existence. Why not? Take a chance. You could be dead tomorrow.
Her dad was driving the car when her mother, sister, and cousin were killed, and as you can imagine this defines him as much as his girls. He’s far from perfect. He drinks too much, his parenting style is haphazard, and their finances are never rock solid. But he’s also clearly a lot of fun, he unabashedly adores his daughters, and he puts them in the center of a large web of friends and family.
From this unconventional childhood, you encounter the people who became the inspiration for some of her funniest SNL characters, and you see how she developed her odd mix of sunshine and transgression. This memoir is filled with funny, sad, amazing stories, like how her dad would occasionally pop speed then stay up all night singing along to Judy Garland and cleaning the house; or the time she and a friend snuck onto a plane from Cleveland to NYC when they were about 12 years old; or how she and a different partner-in-crime pulled off the genius “David Mamet scam” to con their way into auditions. Her bemused recounting of how Gary Coleman tried to sexually assault her is worth the whole book.
She delivers her odd, entertaining life story–a veritable tribute to positivity and resilience–without it becoming saccharine or self-helpy which made me like her even more. She downplays her tenacity, instead celebrating the fun of working hard with people who make you laugh, and she’s smart enough to be humble about her hard-won wisdom. By the book’s end, when she said “We’re alive!” to her teens, I was taking note. Our time here is short, tomorrow isn’t promised, lighten up.
“I can kick!”
Recently, one of my beloved children did something so stupid I honestly felt like a failure at this whole parenting thing. It’s either that I haven't packaged the lessons well, or I've become so contemptible he’s now dedicated to doing the opposite of anything I’ve ever endorsed. It took me several days to realize his bad behavior really had nothing to do with me.
No, I'm not going to tell you what it is. You’ve either weathered worse scenarios and I'll look like a lightweight, or you’ve yet to be crushed and disappointed by your child and I don't feel like giving you the pleasure of feeling superior. In deference to this child should he ever read this, it’s not the first time I’ve been crushed and disappointed by one of my kids and it won’t be the last.
I’m so humbled by the complexities of parenting teens. Little kids are so easy–if you snuggle them, ply them with treats, and take them to the playground you’re worshiped like a demigod. Mine have now reached an age where they can see behind the curtain, where there is no wizard, just an enormously flawed and usually annoying middle-aged woman. I can only hope that their love overcomes this disappointment. I know my love for them annihilates any bad day, even the ones that have nothing to do with them—especially those, in fact.
So they’re stuck with a me that will only get more annoying as the years go on. Teens, however, improve. The change from high school senior to college kid is crazy. It’s like the difference between a 6-month-old and an 18-month-old. So I just have to ride this out and try to remember to look at them and think like Molly Shannon. “Look at us all together, all alive, how great.”
So happy to have found this post. I've been meandering substack looking for help in some form as I'm really struggling emotionally with parenting my older teens. It's really hard not to feel a combination of sadness, anger, guilt, and fear. Obviously love is there all the time, and I write in a gratitude journal every night, where my usual first point is how thankful i am that we are all safe and togethr under one roof. But I know that, so soon, that will change. The lack of conversation, hugs, smiles, and agreeability has just worn me down to a blah sad sack.
such snappy and funny prose - not to mention profound!