Weary of news about the world falling apart, I turn to the comic page for relief. Recently, however, that’s been just as hair-raising as reading about Iraq or global warming. April is in trouble.

April is the sixteen-year-old in For Better or for Worse, which chronicles the domestic ups and downs of an average Canadian family. Unlike most comics frozen in time, these characters age. They grapple with real-life problems, not just how much they can pile on a pastrami sandwich.

I’ve followed April’s development closely, because she was born just a few weeks after my daughter. She’s smart and sassy, just like my daughter. She’s a great, responsible kid whom everyone likes, just like my daughter. Right now she’s lying on the bed making out with a boy who’s come to visit when her parents aren’t home, just like . . .

No, it can’t be. This is when my heart stops. I think I know my daughter. I think I have been a good mother. I try not to be naïve. I even think good mothers can have good daughters who are sexually active. But this is only in the abstract. I wish we could be frozen in time, my daughter as ageless and untouchable as the little red-haired girl for whom Charlie Brown pines, me as blithely impervious to reality (and gravity) as Blondie.

Perhaps I am impervious to reality. In truth I have failed miserably at having “the talk.” Whenever I attempt it, my daughter literally leaves the room. I have left Changing Bodies, Changing Lives on a strategically placed shelf, where it sits gathering dust. While we profess to be highly attuned communicators, our family actually operates under an informal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. I can only hope my daughter was paying attention through all those years of Family Life.

So what will April do? What will Elly and John, her parents, do? I haven’t dared to read today’s strip, although I suspect Elly and John will arrive home in the nick of time and April will be grounded for life, breathing the air of freedom only while enroute with her grim mother to the Planned Parenthood clinic.

What will I do? I took a stab at it tonight by asking my daughter if she reads For Better or for Worse. Good opening gambit.

The answer was no.

What’s my next move?

By Lorrie Goldin

Labels: April, Changing Bodies, Changing Lives, Charlie Brown, comics, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, For Better or Worse comic, Lorrie Goldin, Planned Parenthood

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