525,600 minutes...How do you measure....
Dear Avery,
You read the title of this post and I bet you are singing it in your head now :)
Happy 15th birthday! I have spent probably longer writing this post because I'm finding it so difficult to encapsulate the past year that has been filled with so much change for you.
Friends and Friend Groups and Parties
I find myself first wanting to start with friendship. You live your life in technicolor (i.e. you are emotional) so this is the area where you have always and continue to experience the most highs and lows. I saw this TikTok clip today in which a professor was talking about how he is changing his way of teaching from his generally more laid back style to more structured as a direct result of his students having spent the majority of their high school years in quarantine and thus lacking skills to achieve in an unstructured environment. It had me thinking about how quarantine will impact you long term (NB: can you believe that we are STILL talking about Covid?!?). For a person like you who tends to be intolerant of group think, you missed the majority of your middle school years when you are more or less forced to learn to socialize in groups.
So you have spent your first year of high school being friends with everybody and not in a particular friend group. And this is just fine except for not getting invited to the smaller things. As you turn 15, you have settled into a familiar and wonderful group of girls. You have a best friend, who you don't see very often and who is not in your group of friends. The social order of the small town of Glen Rock and its even smaller Glen Rock High School is bizarre. You are navigating. You cry when you are excluded. You claim to be inclusive and nice to everyone, but I only know your side of the story. For anyone else reading this, if you are a teenage girl who never cries, look in the mirror, because you are the queen-bee mean girl.
Your class of 2026 grade is a party grade. You have attended and hosted these parties. You have not been invited to all of them. You sat home alone on New Years Eve because you hadn't fully committed to a friend group so when cuts were made to the big NYE party, it was an easy decision to exclude you. You cried. Your friend who WAS included didn't skip the party and struggled with how to be kind. She had dinner with you before the party. You probably would have done something similar in her position and this was truly a kindness. The intellectual part of your brain told me that this was character building. I wanted to hug you tight and protect you. I hugged you and went to my own party. You survived. You were invited to other parties after this one.
Any emotion or thought in your head, you share with me. It's emotionally exhausting for me, but I am also so glad to have open line of communication with you. So I know that there is alcohol at these parties. You have had a drink, but are not really a big drinker because your desire to remain in control is greater than your desire to fit in. For the one party you hosted (you kids say "who's throwing this weekend?"), the highlight for me was when the kids began to get rowdy and throw around some milk (we removed all the alcohol from the basement, didn't think the surplus of 2% organic needed to be brought upstairs), you stood up for yourself and for our house and told these kids that you would NOT be disrespected and you shut the party down. In a moment of "hot cognition" (term from the podcast you sent to me), you made a decision not to go with the crowd. People will not be able to take advantage of you - I am not worried, I am relieved. I am in awe of your strength of character.
Net net - friendships are hard for all teenagers and for someone like you who processes raw emotion so fully, it can be even more difficult. By the way, if the above paragraph didn't mention underage drinking, I would probably make a joke to drink every time I mention the word emotion/emotional in reference to you :) My sweet empath.
You May Have Half My DNA, But You Are All Eric
We've always said that you have your dad's personality. As you have finished up middle school and embarked on your high school academic career, this is even more apparent.
You have anxiety about being successful. When you get a B on a test, you feel as if you have failed. When you are utterly prepared, you believe that you will fail. But you don't. You prepare and you are successful.
You are the epitome of gregarious. It makes some teachers love you and others hate you. Same goes for students.
In the past year, you have stepped away from your more creative side and have chosen academics (an AP class as a freshman!), sports and social, as well as brands like Hazel and Lululemon and Nike Blazers and crop tops and wearing contacts over glasses and pretty much anything that makes you fit in and as mainstream as possible. An actual quote from you "This summer I'm going to have all the same clothes as everyone else at camp" <sigh> This makes me a little sad.
When you are out of the house, you want to be included in everything, but like your dad, you need to retreat to the comfort of your own room to recharge. These aforementioned parties are few and far between, so you spend a lot of time at home alone on the weekends. It used to worry me that you weren't always with a group of friends and make me feel sad that I was leaving you on weekend nights for my own social life. But now I recognize that you are so busy all. week. long. and that the weekends truly are a respite for you.
So What Is Taking Up All Your Time?
Sports. A lot of sports. In the fall it was GRHS volleyball and a club basketball team with the high school girls. In the winter it was GRHS basketball and club volleyball team. Now that it's spring you have continued on with Essex volleyball, and have added GRHS lacrosse. Your spring time schedule has you at lacrosse six days a week, volleyball two to three days a week and mathnasium once a week.
Let me be clear so when you read this later in life, you fully recognize the time commitments you have. Three days a week, you leave for school a little after 7:30am and you do not get home to start your homework and have dinner until 10:30pm. On two of those three days you are actively working out and playing sports for five hours. On the days where you only have one sport practice (an additional three days a week), you work out about three hours, and get home on the weekday workouts at 630pm.
You tend to collapse on weekends, but sometimes you babysit. You have nurtured relationships with several families. Little kids love you. You also really like making money and have a work ethic (see above for test and academic anxiety).
You also agree to do Teen Rock, which is like the USY or BBYO associated with our synagogue.
Oh, that also reminds me, you are member of the Jewish Student Union and on the student council. You are a leader who is figuring things out because you don't yet have a flock of people who want to follow you. I promise you, one day you will.
Volleyball Deserves Its Own Section
Oh Avery. Your have found your sport. It has always been a non-negotiable that Eric Schwartz's kids will play organized team sports. Doesn't matter which sport it is. You have tried soccer and cross country and spring track. In addition, for many years you have played basketball and lacrosse. And you were good enough to be a B travel player and you enjoyed these sports well enough surrounded by a group of girls - all the social with none of the group commitment. But this year you joined the freshman girls volleyball team at GRHS. It was more social again with all the girls you have known forever also playing. In addition you had tremendous frustration with the coach - clearly the coach at fault, never you. That last sentence was meant to be sarcastic if that wasn’t clear.
There was a spark for you with this game though. And you took it upon yourself at 14 years old to get yourself on a club volleyball team. You researched, you emailed, you called. And I think that Essex VBC has changed your life. You learned to be a better player (Most Improved Player award!) and a better listener, better at taking advice, a better friend to teammates who have become like sisters in such a short time. You love this game. You practice without being asked to practice. You have the sincere desire to improve, to be a better contributor to your team. This is not to say that you do not get completely annoyed and frustrated at times. You are who you are, but oh Avery, I love what this sport has done for your confidence and for the development of certain aspects of your personality.
One specific anecdote that I want to write down for posterity: You were feeling frustrated that your coach Luigi wasn't letting you play in the games in the position you wanted. So your dad sends an email and the response from the coach was basically that he would try to coach you and you would always be talking back (not rudely), always had an excuse and that you spent more time talking than listening and taking the feedback into consideration. So without telling you about the email correspondence (which would have you shutting down and getting angry and having more excuses), your dad says gently (a first for him :P) maybe you should close your mouth and keep whatever is in your head on the inside, listen to the coach and try what he says. You come home from the very next practice and say "hey dad - I took your advice and it worked!". And that virtuous circle of you listening, the coach responding and you listening some more has brought you so much success. This is what sports are all about, this is so much about you developing good life skills. Proud parent moment.
Life Without Alex
It has been a year of tremendous physical change. I thought Alex moving across the country would leave a bigger hole in your life than it seems to. Instead, it just has you happy to no longer share a bathroom. I guess it will be more like the arc of relationship that I had with my own sister, one in which at first I too was thrilled to have my own bathroom and own tube of toothpaste, but eventually flash forward about 30 years and I cannot imagine a day going by without our talking/texting/communicating/sharing every single day. Alex did call you on your birthday to wish you a happy birthday, but A. I had to text him to remind him to do so, and B. he was at a darty at his frat house so he was not really in a condition to have a deep and meaningful conversation with you. Hold on to your relationship with Alex, who else has had the exact same experience of growing up in this crazy, loving, overbearing family, but him.
Can We Get To The Stats Already?
- New sports tried - already mentioned volleyball, but you also learned to surf this past summer on LBI and one day took off your wetsuit to reveal your bikini underneath, telling me and dad that there were cute boys in the water and if anyone asked that you were turning 16.
- Sports you wish you had never tried - you are absolutely hating being the JV lacrosse goalie (and back up varsity goalie). We are making you finish what you started (play through the season and you will be done), but you hate it every single day. Many of the girls who are your friends decided not to play lacrosse, so the social aspect doesn't exist, your team big sister is a mean girl and the vicious circle of you not enjoying it means that you are not committed to improving, means that you are not getting better, means that the coach and team are not loving your commitment, means that you hate it even more. Our telling you to change your attitude has not helped. So we will just do our best to support your finishing the season. Only a few more weeks of your being miserable everyday after school. Another lesson learned, we keep our commitments, but also nothing in life is permanent and we can always make the changes to improve our happiness.
- You are 5'10.5" and will NOT let me forget that half inch. You like to tell everyone who will listen that you are the tallest woman on both sides of our family. I think you are done growing though as you did not have your usual 3" plus growth in the past year. You are gorgeous. Like people stopping dead in their tracks on the street to look at you, gorgeous. Most of the time you don't know, but there are inklings that sometimes you can objectively look at yourself and feel pretty.
- You had not one, but two boyfriends: Caleb Feinberg at camp (he would probably still like to be your boyfriend and sends you constant snaps) and Malakai who you met at a volleyball tournament in Boston and who you never saw IRL after that and who was upset with you and broke contact after you said you were better off as friends
- OMGosh! The Tony's. That was almost a year ago as a 14th birthday gift from auntie Dawn. Even having taken a step back from your creative side, you still adore Broadway shows and music and told me that you will treasure having attended this event. At the time, you were still lamenting not having been able to have a bat mitzvah party (you still lament and talk about a sweet 16), so we went shopping and bought you a gorgeous full length beaded gown. You did NOT look 14.
- You are a crazy Swiftie. Taylor Swift tickets are going for about $1500 each so you probably wont get to go see her concert. You want to go soooo badly.
- You have a secret life that only you know about (as much as you share with me, I am sure that you do not share everything).
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