Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

copyright Jan. 19, 2006

And He’s Off

            It is birthday weekend at our house.  There are relatives scattered throughout our home: two cousins in our daughter’s room, another behind the stairs, Grandpa in our son’s room, and Grandma free-ranging to fit her nocturnal needs.  Coming down to write at my traditional five o’clock is courting danger- at any turn a tousled head could pop up and say, “Is it time to get up?” with bright eyes and a bushy tail.

            Please God, no, I would think, but have to smile.

            Actually, the birthday boy did just that routine when I tried to creep out of bed this morning, waking none of the four other human beings in our room: the two year old lying at the end of the bed, the ten year old on the other side, my wife in the toddler’s bed (to better evade the kicks) and our fourteen year old to-be on the floor.  It felt like the room was littered with land mines.

            So when our teenage son whispered out of the darkness, “What time is it?” I wasn’t terribly surprised.

            It is impressive how much maternal oppression one can fit into a whisper at five o’clock in the morning (he also tells me I can smote him with my eyes), and he obediently went back to sleep.

            Good thing, because he is a bundle of energy, and a little intense for five a.m.  Lately he’s become nature unleashed, almost my height, definitely stronger (it’s all that rowing!), and infinitely faster.  We raced home during a walk in the neighborhood last week and he wiped the floor with me.  Up to almost three years ago I could beat him (and did so nine months pregnant with his baby brother when my spouse was having a period of anxiety-induced madness and wanted me to have that baby ASAP), but he is faster now.

            I was telling my mother about this recently, and she asked me how it felt to have my son outdistancing me in strength and size.  She was astonished when I answered, “Great!”

            I don’t know what she thought – that I would be jealous of his youth and beauty, his strength and stamina?  How could I be, when this is exactly what I wished for him?

            Not that it is easy to be getting older, and have the evidence staring back at me wherever I go.  I am foolish, frail, vain, but I am a proud mother, and don’t begrudge my kids their youth and strength, for my want of it.

            It is amazing what one does become proud of as a parent.  Those acts of rebellion, those steps to freedom, the new things they try, and the obstacles they overcome.  Oh, how I want their lives to be unconstrained by the anxiety and doubt that has held me in an iron grip all my life. 

            So far, having a teenager hasn’t been too bad.  My I.Q. hit the skids a year back, and I became very, very dumb, but that has been less of an issue this year.  He seems to have accepted my intellectual disability, and made allowances for my age and lack of technological know-how.

Admittedly, we are insulated against some of the teenage American quirks by our lack of television viewing, and his being homeschooled this year and last, but next year he will be a high school freshman and all bets are off.  Fortunately, he will find himself surrounded by familiar faces from grade school again, though we hope the pot smokers will keep it to themselves, and that daughter of a friend will be wrong when she predicted our boy will be a “hottie” in high school.

Handsome is one thing, “hottie” another, yikes!

It is almost like when he was a newborn, and I was fascinated by his daily changes.  Then it was cooing, smiling, and small motor skills, now it is peach fuzz, the patient way he taught his little brother how to construct a puzzle this morning, the concern with which he greeted the news of sexual harassment in his sister’s classroom, and the muscle definition that wasn’t there three months ago.  He has entered the “getting him ready to fly away” stage, and it is bittersweet.  From a covered egg, to a perhaps overly sheltered hatchling, he is stretching his wings with our fingers loosely caging him, keeping him from flying too soon.

Romanticism and sentiment may fly out the window before he does.  I may be mad as hell by next year, he may be impossible, we could enter the cold war of adolescence versus adult at any time, but for now I’m enjoying being the mother of a son rapidly becoming a man, and a good one.