I never meant for it to happen. But somehow I blinked and before I knew it I had become my teenager’s worst enemy. I became a narc.

It started off so innocently. I was talking to a fellow parent, a dad to a girl my daughter had been friends with since preschool. We were joking about the dangers of puberty and how difficult it was to watch our precious girls morph into lovely ladies all the boys seemed to want to sniff around.

One conversation led to another and before I knew it, we were talking about Facebook and I was offering to teach him how to set up stricter privacy controls for his daughter’s profile page. And that’s how I ended up narcing on one of my daughter’s oldest friends.

My older son and I have been knocking heads lately, so much so it seems like I’m always arguing or disciplining or being a wicked mother and it is starting to give me a bit of a complex so I did the one thing I could think of to relieve some of my teenaged boy anxiety and irritation. I took my daughter and nieces to go see Beauty and The Beast in 3D this past weekend. It was girls’ day out, complete with licorice, chocolate, popcorn and mushy musicals.

Sometimes girls just need a chance to be girls and sometimes that means copious amounts of junk food, the inclusion of a Disney princess and a timeless love story.

(There may have been some nostalgia on my half as well.  Beauty and the Beast (non-3D) was the movie I saw on my very first date. His name was Chad and he was shorter than me. I was smitten with him. He dumped me for some rich girl named Mary.

I’m not bitter or anything.

Not anymore at least.)

I’m currently hiding from a group of sweaty teenaged children by sitting in the coach’s office inside the high school gym. The same gym my husband spent most of his academic years in and the very same gym my children will grow up in.

I don’t share this scent of sweaty history with my children as I was born and raised in a city, far away from this place, the gyms I played and learned in too numerous to count from bouncing from one school to the next over the years.

But somehow, almost twenty years later, I find myself sitting in the very same place my husband’s parents must have sat, watching my children, their grandchildren, play where once their children did.

When I was a teenager I was obsessed with growing boobs. Boobs were magical. They were the ticket to a better life. Back when I was navigating angsty teen relations in the hallowed halls of a public high school, it seemed like boobs were the answer to everything.

I was in a desperate hurry to grow breasts.

Boys would finally see me. I’d become popular. At the very least if I grew some chest appendages I’d finally be able to stop shopping in the kid section of the local department store.

I needed boobs.

I used to call my dad ‘Pops’ when I was a teenager. I was an obnoxious shit head who was trying hard to earn my hipster stripes before the term ‘hipster’ was even coined.

I also called him Daddy-O, Mr. Miller when he annoyed me, Dad and of course, Daddy when I wanted to borrow his truck or empty his pockets of cash.

These days it doesn’t matter what I call him, he can’t hear me half the time anyways because he refuses to get his hearing checked. Stubborn old fart.

My dad isn’t just Dad anymore, but Grandpa now too, thanks to the fact sand has poured through the hourglass of time and I am now a parent to children of my own always trying to pick my pockets empty of cash.

The difference between my kids and myself? They never call me Mommy while attempting to manipulate me. In fact, they don’t call me Mommy at all. Like, ever.

Somewhere, amongst the blink of time, the term Mommy has died, to be replaced simply with the steadfast and boring Mom, occasionally Mrs. Miller when they are annoyed with me and not often enough, Oh Captain, My Captain.

Where has Mommy gone?

I hadn’t even noticed its absence from our vernacular until my son dropped a ‘mommy’ bomb on me recently.

“What did you just call me?” I asked my 14-year-old son who is over six feet tall.

He blinked at me, like an owl, probably wondering what craziness I was prattling about this time and then repeated, “Mommy?”

I couldn’t help it. I cracked up.

I used to be a mommy, and to my youngest, the Jumbster, I will always be his mommy, but to my teenagers? I don’t know, but I think I stopped being their mommy around the same time they started understanding math concepts I never will.

All of a sudden it seems ridiculous and weird to have my child call me “Mommy.”

I half expected him to ask me to cut his meat up for him and call me to the bathroom to help wipe his bum.

But when my man-cub towers over me and officially sports a thicker moustache than I do, it just seems odd to have him refer to me by the name he used to when he didn’t know which hand was left and which hand was right.

I saved locks of my children’s hair, their baby teeth (I want to make a necklace out of them to wear the day they graduate from high school) and a pile of artwork and photographs documenting the history of their childhood.

But I rather wish I had taken the time to savour the moments when they could call me mommy without me thinking they sounded ridiculous.

But then again, I also wish I had taken the time to appreciate how thin and perky I looked when I was 21 and wish I had spent more time wearing a bikini than those hideous oversized denim overalls I thought looked cool. You know what they say about youth being wasted on the young. Apparently the same can be said for the early parenthood years.

“Look kid, I love being your mom, and I’m always going to be your mother, but really, call me Mommy again and I will totally post that picture of the time you accidentally spray painted your man-junk bright red when you were three.”

My son looked at me for a second, remembered said photo, shuddered and said, “Deal. MOM.”

And then he wandered off muttering something about me being mommy dearest.

Meh. Whatever.

I am a creature of habit. It’s the same every year. Every New Year’s eve, I do the exact same thing: I spend too much of my night rolling my eyes at the schmucks who take the time to make earnest, well meaning resolutions.

Don’t get me wrong; I was once one of those well meaning schmucks myself. For years I’d make sincere promises to myself to lose weight, gain weight, stop smoking, stop drinking, be nicer to my sister, make more time for my lone grandparent, write more, write better, get a job, exercise, be better.

And every year, less than 48 hours into the new year, (usually) my resolution is shot to hell.

My mother always told me to be the example I wanted to set.

Of course, I’m pretty sure this meant not getting pregnant (twice!) before turning 21 and walking down the long aisle of marriage.

I’m also positive she didn’t mean for me to cover my arms in tattoos or pierce every conceivable part of my body that wasn’t on my face.

If she had her druthers it would have meant going to medical school, becoming a world class surgeon, finding a rich husband and then popping out 2.5 children to raise in my mansion by the lake.

We all can’t set that type of example, though, can we?

My kids and I saw a shooting star a few nights ago. Which led to immediate squeals of delight and hurried wishes.

As we trudged through the snow towards the house, my daughter asked me what I wished for.

“Well, I can’t tell you. Because then it wouldn’t come true,” I solemnly replied.

My son and daughter snorted at me and I’m pretty sure I saw them roll their eyes but it was dark out and I was cold and to be honest, the flash of the whites of their eyes could have been the reflection of the snowy ground around us, but I’d be willing to bet money that they thought I was crazy.

I mean my husband does so why should they be any different.

So I turned the tables on them and asked what they wished for.

Shockingly enough, not everyone in my extended family approves of the way my husband and I (okay, primarily me) raise our children.

According to them, I’m too strict. My expectations are too high. I make my kids do too much.

Frankly, because I’m completely naive and permanently gullible, this surprised me. It didn’t occur to me that people I was related to were judging my parenting. I thought that was reserved for the moms on the playground and the after school pick up line. Especially that one mom with the overly teased hair and peek-a-boo thong who seems to be giving me the side-eye every time I show up at school in slippers and a death metal sweatshirt.

Seven times.

That’s how many times I’ve had to set up a Christmas tree since my son Skjel (pronounced Shale) passed away.

That’s how many Christmases we’ve celebrated and endured without a member of our family.

That’s how many times I’ve had to hang a stocking that won’t be filled for a boy who won’t see it.

It’s how many times my children have silently wept as they pull out the ornaments and see the ones with his name on it and are once again thrust into an active cycle of grief.

Seven times I will have slapped on a happy face and pretended that everything is okay on Christmas morning as I watch my kids rip open their presents.

Seven holiday seasons I’ve sat in a dark room with the lights from the Christmas tree twinkling festively and wondered how tall my son would have been, or what he would have looked like or what he would have laughed at on Christmas morning.

Seven Christmases.

Seven seasons of walking a fine line to bury my own sadness and plastering on a happy face for my remaining kids. Seven holiday seasons filled with Christmas wish lists written by my smalls and every year they have the same request:

To have one more Christmas with their brother.

Seven seasons of wishing the same thing.

Seven Christmases.

I wonder if I’ll ever stop counting the Christmases.