Losing the moral high ground

At the moment there is a party going on in our garden.
Ninesh has made an endless number of pizzas.
I have filled the shed with sleeping bags and duvets and mattresses.
We have pulled the chairs around the fire pit and set the dried up Summer leaves ablaze.
Everything is ready.
The guests are here.
And neither Ninesh or I nor even Mia are invited.

" Can I have a birthday party we get home?" Joss asked while we were away.
" Of course," I smile, pleased that at last he wants to have friends round to our house when we are actually at home. " What day do you want it."
" Monday," says Joss with a certainty we haven't agreed to.
" But that's our first day back at work, our first proper day home.  Don't you think we might still be jet-lagged. Why don't you wait until the end of the week?..." my words trail away.
" Everyone can come on Monday," says Joss.
"How do you know? " I say, " we're in America, they're in England and you only just asked me."
" And then I asked them," explained Joss reasonably, his fingers moving like lightening across his phone.
" And I told them it was a sleepover in the shed," he adds too quickly, " Beth and Brandon are bringing duvets."
I turn my gaze from the pelicans crashing headlong into the blue Pacific Ocean, to Joss, our just-turned-14-years-old son who has just in a casual, off-hand, social networking sort of way, completely manipulated me.
For the last year we have not let Joss stay at sleepovers where there are girls and boys. Despite his tears and his begging and his fury, we held fast to a principle we were almost completely sure was right. 
" You are a teenager Joss," we reasoned, " your hormones are raging. Things can get out of control. You're still too young."
And in the end we won a sort of victory.
Instead of letting Joss sleep over, he would let us drive along narrow, winding roads in the middle of the night, peering at doors, trying to read invisible numbers in the darkness. 
We got to know places in Chichester we didn't know existed. But at least Joss was gracious in defeat and stopped trying to battle us over it.  
He always thanked us for picking him up and never stayed longer than agreed.
It seemed that we had reached the perfect compromise.
He got to see his friends and we got to keep the moral high ground. 
But they are clever these teenagers. 
Joss bided his time
He waited until I was standing on a beautiful beach, bathed in the feeling of warm  happiness that always comes with holidays and peacefully distracted, as I watched the surf foaming to a crashing stop on the sand.
And before I knew what I was doing, I had agreed to everything that he had already planned.
And like the water pulling away the sand between my toes, I could feel the moral high ground slipping away.
And now I am sitting in the kitchen, writing this blog watching a group of carefree 14 year old friends laughing together round the fire. Wearing their pyjamas, they are wrapped in sleeping bags and duvets, planning how to stay awake all night by setting an alarm any time any one of them goes to sleep.
And it is right we were weren't invited.
We have to get used to watching from the sideline as our children stand on the cusp of their tomorrows. Always standing just close enough to catch them if they fall.
And I think perhaps we gave Joss the only birthday present that he really wanted- because we given him our trust.
The fire has gone out and as I watch 6 teenagers disappearing into the tardis-like shed, I can only hope that we were right.