The un-de-friended mother

Elder daughter unfriended me on Facebook when she was fifteen. No offense, she said defensively. She couldn't think of a single one of her friends who had parents as Facebook friends. Facebook was private, she said. Facebook is the polar opposite of private, I said. No dice. Her grandmother, her father and I were out.

Sometime last spring, her name quietly re-appeared on my Facebook list. Rather like a zoologist sighting a rare and shy species, I moved cautiously. I didn't put messages on her wall. I didn't even mention the re-friending. Hesitantly, I would occasionally ask about something I'd seen at her profile.

I soon stopped.

"Mu-u-u-um... Quit stalking me!"

Stalking? Looking at a Facebook profile is stalking? Oh, okay...

I continued to look, but silently. Until this fall when an uncharacteristic note appeared: "(Elder daughter) is attending: I'm getting dru-u-u-unk!"

It seems some friend of hers was celebrating the end of some sort of physical training in which she'd been engaged all summer with a party which wouldn't include "everyone at Dal", just some close friends of her and her flat-mates.

Right. So this was why she was listing it as a "Public Event". One of the said roomies piped up: "In case this isn't clear, it's at our place!" while helpfully supplying the address.

I thought about it all day before typing a comment below the lengthy description of this event: "My daughter's going to kill me for saying this, but if you don't want all of Dal to come, should you really be publishing your address on a public event?"

Elder daughter was in touch with me within half an hour, leaving a "MOTHER!" on my Facebook wall, followed by a winking and bobbing Skype icon. I removed my comment, even though someone had "liked" it. Elder daughter informed me that this was because I'd left the "l" out of "public". I was pretty sure I was going to be unfriended on the spot, but elder daughter fixed it. She informed all her friends that I was crazy.

I guess that's what you call "saving face".