Last night, my house was full of teenagers and laughter and off-color jokes. There was pizza and painting and loud card games. There were make-your-own sundaes, drowning in chocolate syrup and Swedish fish, because Kyle invited four friends over to spend the night in celebration of his 14th birthday. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but I loved every minute of it. Because when teenagers gather in groups, they forget the adults can still hear them. They become wrapped up in their own inside jokes and their crude humor and their developing sense of self. When they’re gathered like that, you get a glimpse of them becoming. Becoming individuals. Becoming adults. Becoming the version of themselves that doesn’t have anything to do with you.
Watching your kids grow up is a pretty universal phenomenon, but like childbirth or any aspect of raising kids, it’s also intensely personal and life-changing and brutal and beautiful.
Today, my firstborn is 14. Despite all evidence to the contrary, deep down, I think I thought he would be little forever. When he was born, I couldn’t imagine a day when he wouldn’t need me to take care of him. Yet, here we are.
Today, my heart aches. It aches with sadness AND joy and I didn’t even know that was possible. Where did my baby go? How did I get so blessed? How can he be so funny and brave and talented? Where did all of that come from?
When did he get his own, caustic, incredible sense of humor?
How did he learn to draw like that?
Where did that confidence come from?
Why won’t he do his homework?
Where did the years go?
What will I do when he doesn’t need me anymore?
If the goal of this whole thing is to help him become a real, functional, grown-up person, why does the thought of him NOT needing me bring me to tears?
For all these years, people have been saying, “Enjoy every moment,” which is sage, yet impossible, advice. And I’ve tried. I try to enjoy every phase and appreciate each stage and just love the little moments. But the moments are slipping away. If fourteen years went by in a minute, the next four or five will be gone any second.
And I can’t stop time. The best I can do is notice its passing. I can look around in this moment and pause to take it all in.
There’s a gaggle of teenagers on my living room floor on sagging air mattresses, wrapped in cartoon-character blankets.
There are two boxes of donuts on the counter, for when they wake up craving carbs and sugar. There’s extra coffee for the parents because they will be full of carbs and sugar.
There’s a fourteen year old with orange hair and trendy glasses and a smile that lights up the room, anticipating his traditional birthday breakfast donut.
There’s a dusting of snow on the ground and two dogs asleep at my feet, while I sip coffee from the cup holder in the reclining couch that we almost didn’t buy because “Cup holders belong in cars, not couches.” That logic was wrong, by the way.
There’s a strong, funny, talented, kind, and easily-distracted bald dude sitting next to me who fills my heart with overwhelming love and also sometimes incredible frustration, and I look at him and I see my future and I also understand this teenager just a little better.
There are two more kids upstairs, one sound asleep who was fourteen yesterday and will spend this weekend writing college essays. The other is playing online games with his friends at this early hour. He’ll be fourteen any second.
The moments blend together and then separate with amazing clarity when you least expect it.
There’s a giggle from the gaggle in the living room. They’re stirring.
In a moment, there will be more moments to enjoy. And while I watch this child becoming who he will be, I will try to remember that I am becoming, too. I am growing into this next phase of parenting; the phase that looks more like worrying and advising and celebrating than supervising and shuttling and, well, raising.
They’re growing. They will soon be grown. And, thank God, there’s still so much to look forward to…
He will ALWAYS need you. And my latest line, “How did my baby get to be 41?”