And now for Aaron’s WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW entry ...

Replaceable
Of all the fears a mother could have, I fear the future.
With shoes tapping, my carefully managed hurtle down the school corridor leads me to the principal’s office.
“Your daughter, Mrs Fowles, has been misbehaving online.”
I do not understand.
The principal swivels the monitor. The plastic creaks. The mouse wheel crinkles. Online messages and posts scroll along the screen. They blur. I catch glimpses of the words. My breath catches. I do not know this author who writes with barbed and caustic glee.
She sits behind me, arms folded impatiently. Her untroubled gaze looks past us and to the window.
When I turn to consider her and all the things that I must say, I realise I care about only one thing: of all that she has betrayed, my daughter has betrayed me.
I raised her better. It was not I who erred. How was I to know the discipline I instilled in her would erode and rot on the internet?
Then to home, in the coolest of airs. With the door shut and locked and the windows latched closed, we scream. I slam, with my hand, the kitchen tabletop. I flutter into poses. I clutch her bag in my shaking hands. Upend it on the table. Her phone, I take. That tablet too. The secret second phone! White-knuckled, I snatch it. She shrieks and pulls her hair.
There is a forbidden joy in this for me.
That night, she is not in her room and her clothes are gone. She has run and I regret it all. My husband and I pace the living room, arguing between the distractions of our thoughts. Then, a crash at our hearts, a knock on the door. With a Garda behind her, my daughter steps inside, without regret or concern. Past me, past her father and into her room. To him I look and to me he shrugs.
I give the devices back.
Restrictions seem futile. Punishments backfire. Behind her door, she sniggers and types. I see through the keyhole, my wall-pressed ear hears.
I have made a mistake and worry it is irrevocable. At night, I blink at the clock’s red digits. I sweat and am drenched. My husband slips out and steps through the door to curl on the couch.
She comes to me no longer. For advice, for knowledge. The things that must be spoken between a mother and her daughter are left unsaid. I have been rejected; in this new world that I cannot comprehend, this girl has learned the trick: with the clicking of her mouse, with the tapping of her thumbs, she can search elsewhere for a mother’s guidance.
The future has come and my fears live true. The future is here and everything can be replaced.

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