Fifteen

Watching my Boy Child sprawl into a Man Child leaves me both baffled and in awe. Fifteen is an odd place indeed~ no longer a kid, nowhere close to adult.

Being my youngest, there were literal pangs in my heart when he turned double digits. There was a bit of denial when he passed me up in height, but at some point, I could no longer ignore his growth. Now, I have to crane my neck to look him in the eye.

The Winnie the Pooh belly of his childhood has transformed into a 6 pack, or maybe a 12 pack by now. His long pants seem to turn into capris on a weekly basis, and giant puppy style hands and feet sprout from long limbs that have grown so rapidly, he barely knows what to do with them. I sometimes think if he had a tail, he would wag it.

His muscles flex and a deep “bro” voice appears in certain company, namely that of teenaged females, yet he giggles over goofy kid jokes with others. The hair that had at least one fist sized knot in it for years now somehow is gelled into coolness.

As I observe him navigating the strange waters of adolescence, I’m one proud mama. Yes, on occasion  he has done a few things that made me wonder if he was trying to qualify himself as contender in the dumb arse of the week club, but who hasn’t? I probably spent a good portion of 1986 through 1991 in that category.

What I see in my Boy Child is loyalty and strength, curiosity and kindness, determination and a forgiving heart, and above all, a great sense of humor.

I still miss the little boy, but I love the man he is becoming.

Anne Lamott talks about how none of us is really the age that we currently are, but a combination of all the ages we have ever been, and how you can see this is your kids. It’s true.

I think back to fifteen years ago, when after what felt like one of the world’s longest pregnancies~ like the pregnancy that would never end~ and was followed by one of one of the shortest labors ever, how my world was taken by storm.

I remember looking down and laughing happy tears at this huge baby who looked like an angry old man, mad as heck that he had to exit the comfort of my womb.

This baby, who seemed perfectly happy to stay put in my uterus for 3 weeks past his original due date turned into a kid who is obsessed with punctuality. I wonder if this is some sort of cosmic joke, since he was born to a time challenged mother who this shirt may have been designed for:

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(I do try to get places on time, but really, as per the Doctor, I don’t really think of time as time being a strict progression of cause to effect. “It’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff…” )

Thinking back to the boy who for years lived up to the nickname “Hurricane,” the boy who ran, jumped, fell, broke, built, dismantled and destroyed, I can still see him in there.

Now, this Giant Boy still runs and jumps, but falls and breaks things less often. His building has surpassed his dismantling, and aside from occasional mishaps with electronics,  his destruction is for the most part contained to the video game world.

Whoever he becomes in the future, that Boy turned out to be one of the best surprises of my life.

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