To the boy who is ~5 inches from towering over me,
It’s getting real. Twelve years of you, of figuring all this out, it’s always been real, yes, but now it’s puberty real. It’s preteen real. It’s who is this giant boy in my house real.
So we’re both navigating it. You have questions, and I’m working out how to give you answers. How to inspire instead of scare you. How to supply what you seek and not turn you away. How to prepare you for this next middle school phase. How to handle ambition, how to handle rejection, how to be sensitive to others, how to see the world in increments of bigger and bigger as you move forward, step, step, step towards the next phase.
And how much of it is me anyway? You came out from behind your long, sun-kissed hair to interview for limited school spots… and while I waited, eavesdropping outside your bedroom door, I couldn’t believe how this tiny armful of Koala with whom I learned to be a mom with was now goal-oriented and empowered in representing himself to complete strangers.
Something that has only hit me very recently (like, this morning), is how I haven’t quite grasped the degree to which you think for yourself, you see the world from your own unique empathetic viewpoint, how you think of others’ existence, how you see the world around you and start to break it down. Related to friends, teachers, sisters… global crises, national politics, history…
You hold a dog walking job, your graduation is coming up, not to mention we’re officially in the pre-Bar Mitzvah year. In the second decade of ‘momming’ I can see things coming together that were only vague expectations ten years ago.
And the best is, it’s actually really fun to go through this with you.
Whadya got: