As we floated down the river on paddleboards, quite literally, I glanced back at my 15 year-old son. A quick second of seeing him floating, all gleaming white in the sun, with his wild swim shorts and wide-brimmed hat he’d borrowed from me, I felt my mind run down and around my life, his life, our lives. I saw his current self, sometimes sullen and argumentative, trying to find his adultness, trying to expose my ridiculousness, trying to open up doors he doesn’t really know he wants open. I saw hoodies and baseball hats and headphones.  

Simultaneously, I saw his childhood in his ridiculous swim shorts with pink and yellow and Mickey Mouse, rolled at the waist. He never wears swim trunks, so these were from last summer. They no longer fit, and for today’s outing, they were a loud reminder how he’s changed so much in 12 months, how he’s stayed the same.   

The dark red hat he borrowed, made me think of the way he doesn’t truly care if he’s dressed to loud, too quiet, too much, too little, too anything other than what he chooses. He is who he is. He fights and hates losing. He lives below the radar, but only more recently.   

His long hair is a small rebellion of not getting to go to the stylist he wanted most recently. His strength shows in his ability to navigate what we are doing, most of the time. His tenacity is lying below the surface of his apathy, and he can’t always decide which is most applicable to the situation. Time will let him know which works best for his plans.   

But his face, his face… although more angly and big, although he has bones where chubby cheeks used to dance, although he has the whisper of a moustache and a smile that emerges less frequently due to the necessity of appearing unmoved, his face is a beautiful map of his life.  

I see the stages suddenly and with such force, that tears fall out of my face and run down the sunscreen on my face. I imagine I’ll tan in tears, but more likely, I’ll burn in those lines down my face in the hot Arizona sun.   

It’s really the way you see it in any moment. But in that moment, I saw his life flash before me, and the comingling of adulthood and childhood, mixing and moving, trying to intermingle, trying to morph, finding it’s correct proportions so he can become the person he wants to be, so he can try something and succeed and fail and change course.   

I stand in awe that I am the parent of this beautiful person, that I have a front seat in his journey, that I can both try to offer a safe harbor and challenge him and love him and be so very frustrated, all at the same time.   

NO ONE can prepare you for being a parent, because no one can tell you what kind of life or child or plans or diversions or tricks of fate will befall the road. And NO ONE can tell you that the peace you feel when you see your child and know no matter what you think or know or absolutely don’t…. the only place you can be is outside their body and soul. The only vantage point is the one you have, and loving them, letting them go and letting them reach you all at once is the best position you will find.   

I am the greatest happiness and joy watching him live and grow. I am the greatest version of knowing I control nothing and maybe never will. And I have the greatest feeling of awe knowing I had something, anything, so much, so little to do with this person I have had the most incredible privilege of raising.   

Your face, my child, is a map of memories, not just of you, also of me. And neither of us would exist in our current reality without the other, and I hope we can learn to honor the best and worst in each other as our lives continue to grow and evolve and I continue to have the honor of simply being your mother. 

With love, 

CC 

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