I queue up Taylor Swift to start as I enter the car and connect the phone. Say Don’t Go fills the enclosed space. The ride to the bus stop is less than a minute. I park and sing along as loudly as I dare. Pattu joins me. When the lyrics pause and the music takes over, it slips out.

“I wish I had this song in 1999.”

The clamors of “Why? Why???” drown out the rest of the song.

“Because I was nursing a broken heart…” I say and almost blush. The twins are unfazed. We need the deets. Spill the tea. Their requests are energetic and engaged.

In the five full minutes before the school bus arrives in a blaze of flashing lights. I talk to them about relationships. About deep feelings and unreasonable expectations. I talk to them about hormonal overload. I talk to them about how feeling deeply, unashamedly and, unreservedly sometimes breaks your heart into bazillion tiny pieces. I talk to them about friendships that fill your soul and sometimes leave you bruised and battered. I talk to them about feeling empty, sad and, broken.

Just before they leave, I also talk to them about how high on life those intense feelings can be. On the way back home, Taylor is now singing about Karma and it feels just right.

Relationships or otherwise, we reap what we sow. Sometimes, we don’t. We sow too many seeds, over water them and sometimes, fester in the muck without realizing that some seeds need space. Whatever sprouts eventually thrives, feeding off the fertile muck that is the remnants of the ones that died in the dark.

On days like today, I look back at my teen years and wonder why we never had these conversations about relationships ever with the adults in our life. Would it have been any better? Would I have learned to temper expectations? Would I have viewed the adults in my life with a wee bit more understanding and empathy knowing they were just as vulnerable and flawed?

I have no idea what my children see but this is what I hope they do. That their mother is a bundle of imperfections. That she is as flawed as they come. That she is floundering even as she closes in on her fifties. That she struggles with validation, acceptance and, love even to this day.