The Way Things Are



%%%%


navigation
home
archives
profile

extras
links
about

contact
email
notes

credit
host
design

Not at all ready
2005-03-16, 10:54 a.m.

I called Lil Guy last night at his dad�s house, and a stranger, a strange man-child with a deep voice answered the phone. �Lil Guy? Is that you?� �YES, MOM.� �What happened to your voice, son?� �I HAVE A COLD.�

Shew! Thank God. I was really worried for a few seconds that he had completed Stage 3 of Puberty: The Deepening. For inquiring minds, Stage 1 is rancid b.o. and Stage 2 is pre-zitty skin. He has Stage 1 and Stage 2 in abundance. I am not ready for Stage 3, and I don�t even want to think about what Stage 4 has in store. And I am quite certain that there are several substages that have occurred that I don�t know about, need never know about, and will never know about.

Somehow, I don�t think it�s up to me and my readiness, though. It�s going to happen whether I�m ready, whether I�m looking and paying attention. Ready or not.

Looking ahead when they are babies, the years stretching ahead seem endless. He�ll be an infant FOREVER. He�ll be a toddler FOREVER. He�ll be a little boy FOREVER. You can�t imagine this little child growing up and becoming a real live human person. But right now, it doesn�t seem he�ll be a prepubescent surly preteen FOREVER. Looking forward, the years are bunching up, coming faster and faster. It�s easier to imagine him growing up now. Looking back, everything happened in the blink of an eye. I run into old friends in town who I haven�t seen in 20 years, and it seems unreal that I�ve even been on this earth for 20 years. Twenty years is only half of it, though. Looking forward, it is supposed to feel interminable. It is supposed to feel like I�ll never get there, LG will never get there. We�ll be here, frozen in this place, forever.

But as he gets older, and I get older, his growing up resembles Christmas more and more. It is coming faster each year, and this is magnified the more he reaches these milestones that bring him closer in age and maturity to me. I have rancid b.o. or at least the potential for it. I have pre-zitty skin. He�s as tall as I am, his feet are much bigger than mine, and the gods are playing a cruel practical joke on me by evening out the playing field and bringing him to the same level of all growed up as I am.

There are times when I just want to pick him up and hold up, and carry him around. I can�t do that. I can�t lift him. If I tried, his toes would still be dragging the ground. I still see the baby, the toddler, the little boy inside him, and it�s so hard to let that Lil Guy go and not hold him in my lap, curled in a little ball. There is a part of me that is frozen in 1995, with a toddler who fits in my lap and in my arms�the part of me that still sees the tiny little boy inside the stinky man-child.

I really wish I were an eloquent writer, that I could spin this story and train of thought into something that those of you who stumble across this could feel and understand as sharply as I do. I know this is disjointed. If it were a business letter, I could craft this into a terse and professionally-written document, and I�d be terminating a contract at the end of it, and you would call me and be petulant and unhappy with me, and I would stand my ground and tell you that I have no choice, the contract must be terminated.

All I can do here is try to describe what it�s like to wonder where my tiny little boy went, and to catch glimpses of him at times, for part of me to still see him and know he�s there, and to feel that the years are falling toward me faster and faster. Time is speeding up, and I measure it with my son.

0 comments so far

last - next