He's turning 15

"Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play. I don't remember growing older. When did they . . /Sunrise, sunset/ Swiftly fly the years."  

Since the secretary of my son's doctor measured his height and told us that he is now 5'7", I found myself singing lines from Fiddler on the Roof's theme song, "Sunrise, Sunset," over and over to myself.  LSS or last song syndrome as my son would call it.  Of course I knew since a few months back that he had grown taller than me.  It never dawned on me though to actually check his actual height.  5'7"?  How could the little baby I nursed with my breast milk for 18 months and danced to sleep as I carried him be 5'7"?  

It's not just his height that tells me he is not a little boy anymore.  His voice which I'd sometimes fail to recognise when I overhear him from another room mirrors his bigger larynx and lengthened voice cords.  His is now a deeper voice which reminds me of that deep voice of James Bond.  

Today, watching him bring out the TV that he brought into my room for us to watch a film, I once again felt a combination of disbelief and wonder at the boy who was in front of me.  I used to turn on the TV for him and run DVDs of Barney episodes, Spiderman 1 & 2, and Land Before Time that we would watch over and over again. Now, he downloads movies for us to watch, brings the TV to my room for my viewing pleasure (nicer to watch from my bed), and sets up everything.  He knows how to operate the smart TV I had purchased to take the place of the old box type TV.  The smart TV called for a smarter, more techie user and that's my son, not me.

As he turns 15 on the 9th and as I continue to see him go through growth spurts, I feel truly grateful for the person he is becoming and for the beautiful memories stored in our hearts.  My heart swells with gratitude and joy for all the challenges we've weathered, the most significant of which were the regular hospital confinements because of his asthma attacks and the pain and sense of isolation that the marital separation had brought to us as a family.  

Time flies. Our hearts heal our wounds albeit partially. Our bodies have changed.  From season to season, we've been together sometimes holding hands, always holding hearts.  For my great love for him, a part of me feels a certain ache.  Yes, it's partly that self-centred ache that longs to always be at the centre of my son's life;  but it's more than that.  It's an ache that comes from the reality that bites us more and more, every single day.  It is the reality that we are two separate beings.  It is not just that the differences in our individual choices and ways are becoming more apparent, but also that he is grown (and thankfully, self-assured enough) to assert his sense of identity.  

It is the ache of the separateness and the reality that I have to allow him the space to keep things from me that sometimes overwhelm me.  Yet, I also know that he needs this space to learn to trust himself enough to allow his self-identity to unfold and to be bold enough to create his identity according to how our Creator is continuously molding his Self. It is the hunger for my curiosity over many things that sometimes leaves a certain vacuum.  Has he started to explore masturbation?  What sexual thoughts does he have?  And what about wet dreams? These are sacred grounds I'm careful to tread for I know that how we deal with this "secret world" now will teach him how to respect others' as well as his own boundaries - physical and otherwise. 

As always, I try to rise to the challenge of the moment, and right now it seems to be that of being a gentle, rather than intrusive presence, always here for my dearest, season after season.   I remind myself to trust that the seeds of goodness and love we planted during the last 15 years have not fallen on arid land and that our loving and faithful God will keep watch over him and hold his hand to a place where he can be his best Self, in ways that I, as a loving yet limited parent, probably cannot.