“This is what it feels like to have no kids” said my husband on the weekend as we strolled through the city after a leisurely breakfast at a place where there were no kids menus and no babycinos.
Little Pencil had been to a soccer match and a school fete, played a billion hours of x-box, stayed up past midnight watching the soccer at a sleepover. And then he’d been to another friend where’ he’d stayed for dinner. I am exhausted just typing that.
We’d been alone most of the weekend, looked at houses we toyed with the idea of buying, shopped for stuff for the house we actually live in, went out with friends, ate too much. Just the kind of thing we did before we had Little Pencil. Only difference was the conversation.
Clearly we never spoke about Little Pencil much before he was born, but it sure as hell is an art we’ve finessed in the twelve years since.
At first our conversations about him were anxious. And when I say “at first” I mean for the first few years.
Will he ever learn to sleep? Will he ever chew his damn food and not squirrel it in his cheeks? Will he walk? Will he be smart? Will he wear a nappy at his 21st? Will he ever get over this fetching case of orange tinted skin from the zillions of pumpkins we fed him? The normal ramblings of neurotic first time parents.
And then he went to school and we started to talk about whether he’d ever shut up in class and would his teachers think we were terrible parents because he’s so thin and he never ever shuts up and would he ever eat his school lunch? Would he ever do his homework without threats to take away his x-box?
But now he’s getting older and the conversation is changing even more. In fact it’s moving on from worrying about him and verging on concern for me.
You see he’s older now. He’s almost a teen in fact and he is behaving just as one would expect a boy on the verge of “becoming a man” to behave. He’s brimming with independence, he’d far rather be with his friends than anyone else, he’s testing his boundaries and he’s having the time of his life.
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Conversations with my husband are now peppered with questions from me: Will he be safe? Do you think he’ll be okay? Are you sure he should stay up that late? Do you really think he should play that game/sleep at that friend/have 4 boys over to sleep/listen to that music?.
My husband nods his head sagely a lot.
But, he’s not as wise as my son who summed it up best this morning in the car on the way to his Year 7 orientation at school when he turned to me and said: “it’s funny mom, I am so excited and you are the one that’s nervous”
Clearly he has a lot to teach me.
I am trying to be enthusiastic about him growing up. I am trying to relish the weekends when I don’t see him at all because his social calendar is full. I’m trying to remember how not to worry about him all the time.
Of course I’m excited for the opportunities that lie ahead of him and the child that he is and the adult I know he will become. But I can’t help feeling a little sad, a little sentimental about the little boy who is now almost a teen.
Being a parent means teaching your children to be independent enough to live without you. It’s about letting go bit by bit, it’s about creating independence, it’s about letting your heart live outside your body and then move away.
It’s hard to make that move. But at least I never have to stop talking about him.
When you wrote ‘Little Pencil’ did you mean to write ‘my dog’????
Lovely post. I feel all of these things already but my children are 5, 3 & a newbie!!! I love that I’m currently their favourite person in the world but I know those days are numbered. My eldest is about to start proper school and already the lure of reckless fun with friends is growing stronger by the day! While I worry on the sidelines :-/
I shall watch and learn from how you handle it with little pencil!x
What a beautiful comment – thank you so much xx
Raising our kids is like flying a kite. In the beginning we run right next to them. Holding them in our arms, or running very close. There are moments when they seem to catch an independent wind, to fly away, only to fall back into our arms or to the ground. Of course we’re right there to pick them up, and to demonstrate the importance of trying again. To run as fast as we can so they can experience that lift off again. One day we notice that they’re actually flying…without us running. But now their altitude and joy of flight can only come from us letting out some string. We can and should keep that string of love, caring, and tradition, tied to them and us…but if we don’t let out more string and allow them to fly…they’ll crash.
It sucks, but it is. As Kalil Gibran says, (paraphrasing here) We’re the bow and our children are the arrows. We can aim the arrow, but once we do our best to send that arrow off into the future, we must find a way to enjoy being a bow, knowing that we can never live in the future where our arrows are headed.
If we try, out of love, to keep these beautiful kites and arrows close to us, even if we kid ourselves that our selfish reasons are actually forms of love, we lesson their altitude and Journey. I.E. we fly a kite or shoot an arrow like Mr.pencil. I’ve seen that, and ain’t nobody got time for that!
Thank you for your very beautiful analogy Trev, if you get here for Little Pencil’s Bar Mitzvah I will quote it in my speech xx