I cried when I found out he was a boy. The ultrasound tech paused the screen, took her still-shot photo and typed "BOY" smack dab in the middle of it. Nick was so excited, but I turned my face to blink away the small tears that had escaped my eyelids. I wanted a girl SO badly. Since the minute I'd found out I was pregnant, I was imagining hair bows, matching outfits, painting fingernails and sweet little butterfly kisses. After all, I had a little sister 9 years younger than me--I had already practically raised one little girl and loved it. A daughter would be a piece of cake, right?......turns out she IS a piece of cake, but that came a few years down the road.
Instead, I was getting a son first. A son. What on earth do you do with little boys? I'm not really into sports. I don't really LOVE the outdoors. Not a huge fan of talking about poop and farts all day. Couldn't care less about monster trucks and dinosaurs. What's left?...... Eating?? I do enjoy a good carb-loading session....maybe that's where we'd find our common ground!
Thankfully, I warmed up to the idea of a sweet little boy and by the time he entered this world, I was more than ready to be his momma. Year by year, we've made it through life together and became best buds along the way. I survived getting peed on in the middle of the night when his pee-pee tee-pee failed to do it's job during a diaper change. I learned that burping sounds produced the BEST belly laughs from my two year old boy. I managed to get through (and even somewhat enjoy) "playing cars" for hours on end. I even survived a LOT of poop....and talking about poop......and jokes about poop.
But I blinked and now he's almost a teenager. It brings me to tears to even type those words....how does time have the courage to age my little boy when I'm sitting here begging him to stay little? If I dwell too long on the amount of change that's happened in the last 12 years, it can be overwhelming. So when the nostalgia hits me too hard, I focus on the things about him that HAVEN'T changed......his eyes are still as blue as the sky, just like the day he was born. He still has a little wrinkle in his right ear. He continues to be the MOST stubborn human I know. The faces he makes and the things he says still make me laugh on a daily basis. He still has that same raspy voice that croaked out of his mouth when he first started talking. He can drive me insane one second and steal my heart the next. He still REALLY enjoys laughing about poop and bodily functions.
I think it's middle school....the thing that's triggering all these feelings for me. I dropped him off for middle school football camp last week. We pulled up in the parking lot. He spent a minute looking around and then spotted a group of his friends walking in. He said to me, "I don't think you need to walk me in, Mom."
Oof.
I've always hated when authors used that word (oof), but that's the literal sound that left my mouth after he got out of the car. All I could see as I watched him walk across the parking lot was the tiny little blond boy I walked into preschool 9 years ago. But he didn't need me this time. And what a hard, wonderful thing that is.
We spend all these years raising our kids. And it can be easy to forget that the time, effort and love we put into it isn't necessarily for OUR benefit, but for theirs. What more could we hope for than to raise God-fearing children who aren't scared to do things on their own? And sure....walking into a camp alone is such a small thing. But he's always been just a little unsure when he tries new things. He's always wanted me there just in case he has questions or isn't sure what to do next. He's always glanced back...just once....to make sure I'm behind him. And I always have been--with a small smile and small wave (so as not to embarrass him too much, of course) of encouragement. But he didn't need me this time.
As he heads into middle school, I'm doing my best not to project all of my middle school insecurities on him. As a teenager, if I walked past a group of people laughing, I immediately assumed they were laughing at me. If whispers made their way through a crowd, I became self-conscious and wondered what I'd done to be whispered about. I wanted nothing more than to blend into the background and NOT be noticed. As an adult, I now realize they were most likely NOT talking or whispering about me (how conceited of me to think so, right?). But having a child...a literal piece of my heart....come into this age, I find all of these insecurities rearing their ugly heads. As we were leaving an event a few weeks ago, we walked past some kids his age that laughed shortly after we went by. My heart sunk to my feet and I blurted out to him, "Why do you think those kids were laughing?" He just kept walking and said, "Who cares?" I can't even explain the relief I felt in that moment....he just literally didn't care. I've always wished I had spent SO much less time worrying about what other people thought about me in school. To know that at least right now, in this pivotal age in his life, the judgement of his peers wasn't a weight he was carrying was a breath of fresh air for me.
We've both come a long way, me and him. He's slowly morphing into the boy (kid? man?) we've been praying he'll be. And I've been morphing into the mom He wants me to be. Turns out I DO like sports if he's the one playing them. I can talk about athlete's stats, game scores and the newest pair of Nikes he wants for hours if it means he wants to spend time with me. We do indeed both REALLY enjoy a good carb-loading session (although we forgo the marathon that usually gets ran AFTER carb-loading sessions). We find common ground in our sarcasm and sense of humor. And every now and then....very rarely and don't tell him I told you.....I can even get him to snuggle with me for a minute. But only for a minute...he's never still for too long. Afterall, he's a pre-teen with a life to live!
Time is a thief. It's amazing how quickly this....
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