Yesterday, I desperately scraped together the last of the bacon bits to put on a grilled cheese sandwich for Yanni. She has been volunteering for the past two weeks, and, being a notoriously picky eater, she has been skipping lunch.

It was Wednesday, our park day, and I’d arranged to meet our friends at a local beach. I thought I’d take Yanni. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a treat.

I thought I’d try to be a good mother and give her some food.

She left the sandwich on the sign-in table at New Genesis.

I whined about not wanting to push her into some sort of eating disorder by insisting that she eat. I’ve never cared one way or the other whether she ate or not; I knew she wouldn’t starve. And yet, here I am all worried about her and eating. She tried to reassure me that she liked food and cooking too much to starve herself.

So, anyway, I’m on this quest to have fun with the children, right? And Yanni would rather be sweeping a hot gym with her friends than at the beach with her family. And it hurts.

She resists just about everything I try to do, until she hears it from someone else. It burns me up, because I had a strained relationship with my mother growing up, and I vowed I wouldn’t have that with my daughter. So I suck it up, and put up with more from her than I’d like.

She’s really about what’s in it for her, though. Must be the age, and I shouldn’t take it personally, but 15 1/2 years is a long relationship.

We used to play together. We learned to cook together. We learned to clean together. We have been close for a long time.

I almost blew it yesterday by being sulky. Instead, I stayed open to listen to what Yanni had to say about volunteering. I didn’t make her watch her siblings. I just let her be. And she ended up going out in the water to play with Imani and Joy. Esteban clung to her for dear life, and she came out of the water, pulling him off like a leach. I went out in the water, thinking what great accessories little children are when you’re ashamed of your body in a swim suit.

I mentioned that to Yanni when I came out carrying Esteban. She laughed and remembered a picture of me hiding behind her when she was 8 months old. I had a great figure then. What was I thinking?

Yanni will take drivers ed next week. I have been taking her out in the evenings to practice driving around a parking lot. I hear she is supposed to know how to drive for real before taking Driver’s Ed. Lisa told me that she’d gotten a reprimand for her oldest daughter’s lack of driving skills by the first day of Driver’s Ed.

It’s safe to say I’m scared to death. But I don’t want to let Yanni know that. I still want to keep it fun, even while mentioning “Mechanized Death,” and all the lovely health and safety movies we watched in Driver’s Ed.

Yanni is so excited. And we have fun going out in the car. I tell her to pretend that the empty spots around us in the parking lot are cars, and to avoid them when pulling out. She was so excited to park backwards, and to get the hang of parallel parking.

Despite her everyday seeming to jab me, telling me I’m not fun. AT ALL. EVEN A LITTLE BIT. . . When she sees what’s in it for her, she has fun.

Last night when I picked Yanni up from volunteering, she told me that the sandwich had been waiting for her on the sign-up table after the beach. She ate it, and it was good, and the other kids were jealous.

I guess I’ll hang in there with her.