The Gamut
As I've negotiated the twists and turns of my own life, watching China run the gamut of social and educational extremes has been both fascinating and irritating. But always, she shows a rebounding ability that brings her back to her own center. Apart from being my daughter, she is also one of my favorite characters—animated, self-willed, talented, dramatic, and never boring. I love her, and, fortunately, I also like her. Sometimes, those feelings are not necessarily in sync, but on the whole, I couldn't have dreamed up a better child or a better friend. When we fight, it's an even match, and when we're close, it's an even love. Our styles may be different, but the absolute focus is the same. We can each be aggressively obnoxious or persistently entertaining. When China jumps into a “role” with both feet, its the same steamroller that Mama drives—rampant.
While she was attending Marin County Day School, China conducted herself in the proper beige manner expected of private-school girls. When I arrived to pick her up after school in my gullwing DeLorean, it seemed that between the outrageous car with doors that swung out and upward, my black knee-high leather boots, and my short skirts, I stuck out as true rock-and-roll sleaze next to the other moms who drove up in their BMWs in tastefully blended afternoon matron attire. Result: China was embarrassed—her mom was a freak.
Then a shift occurred.
When China's hormones and the boom box took her in the opposite direction, Mom's unusual employment and deportment were suddenly okay. Thirteen-year-old China no longer wanted to hide the fact that her mother might have sprung, claws bared, out of a boiling counterculture. She was now proud of her musician parents, and had even gone a few steps ahead of us by sporting the new punk look—asymmetrical short spiky multicolored hair, a line of pierced rings all the way up one ear, four inches of silver bracelets, and ripped shirts, jeans, genes, and friends.
Then the balance.
At age fifteen, the two extremes blended into a Duran Duran-loving, long-blonde-haired California girl appearance. Her summer job as MTV's youngest VJ was a high school kid's dream—she got to hang out in New York, meet and interview the bands, get her face on TV, and put some money in her pocket. During the punk stage, China's grades had been predictably rotten, but when she graduated from high school, her report cards contained primarily A's and B's. She'd tried on the polarities and settled into a balance that fell in line with her own disposition. Always quicker than Mom to recognize potentially destructive patterns of behavior (either right or left), she now alternates between being my parent and friend and being part of her own somewhat disenchanted generation.
Grace and China, Evening Star premiere: different styles, same focus. (Fred Prouser/Reuters/Archive Photos)
Not that she's turned into a doormat. Sometimes more of a pit bull than I ever was, she's able to do what I generally couldn't: express sober rage. Skip's ex-mistress (remember the AA prom queen?) was still carrying a torch after some length of time, and China, more of a mail ferret than I, sniffed some perfume on a letter addressed to him. Matching up the envelope to previous pieces of Miss X, seventeen-year-old China telephoned her and left this little reminder on her answering machine:
“If you ever interfere with my family again, I'm going to send Mafia wise guys over to break your whoring ass.”
So much for becoming friends with all my boyfriends' lovers.