Growing Up

My oldest child will become a teenager this week. I remember holding him as a baby...looking at that little face and imagining what he would grow to be. It seemed like so far away in the future. Now I watch him biking down the street to his friends, getting slammed by hockey pucks launched by boys that are taller than me, or simply reading in bed with his feet getting closer and closer to the edge. He doesn’t cry anymore when he gets hurt. He just winces a little when I clean his cuts. His once toothless smile has braces with colored bands and his hair has grown long under the baseball cap he always wears. We have conversations about sports or the news or things that happened in his day and, once in a while, I’ll hear the occasional “crap” come out of his mouth. He’s begun to have his own experiences separate from me. I know that there are parts of his life that I don’t know about and I hold my breath hoping that he is good and happy and safe. Every once in a while he’ll give me a hug or I’ll watch him sleeping and he still seems somehow small. I dream about this next stage of his life and realize how proud I am of all he has done so far. Happy Birthday!