There’s a metamorphosis happening at our
place and I’m not expecting to see a butterfly emerge any time soon.
Having parented, (and survived) two teenage
girls, I was fairly confident I had the whole puberty- mother thing under
control and besides, everyone knows that boys are easier than girls, right?
Well, Taine turns 13 today and I’m not quite so confident anymore.
My beautiful little, tousle haired boy is
transforming, before my very eyes, into a man. Like a less verdant version of the
Hulk, his body is morphing into its adult shape, long and lean with man hands
sprouting from the ends of his arms. You can literally see his bones growing
and stretching under the skin; the puppy fat falling away to reveal an angular
and less awkward new shape. Every window in our house has become a mirror
that measures the change in his abs and biceps! His feet are already bigger
than his father’s, signaling a further growth spurt on the horizon and
increasingly more expensive visits to the shoe shop.
The fridge and the pantry are often empty;
despite my daily shopping they are devoid of proteins and carbohydrates- but
that doesn’t stop him from endlessly opening their doors to window shop.
The eyes that used to look beseechingly at
me to pick him up and carry him are suddenly at eye level with my own and more
often defiant than compliant. He’s developed a passive resistance that leaves
his bedroom chaos untouched and his homework wallowing in the bottom of his
bag.
The timid creature who used to worry about
his own safety has dissolved into a testosterone fuelled risk taker, full of
bravado and c’est la vie. His voice has dropped an octave and his constant stream of conversation has been reduced to the odd grunt or a single letter text message.
His teddy, Lamby, lies abandoned in a corner
of his room somewhere, smothered by the discarded dirty clothes and surrounded
by other abandoned relics of his boyhood. That poor stuffed sheep has traveled the
world with him and now it doesn’t even rate a spot on the bed! One night my little boy went to bed calling
out his usual chorus of “Love you Mum, love you Dad”. The next morning he started calling me Anne and squirming when I tried to give him a hug.
I remember when I was pregnant with Taine,
a miracle, conceived around my 45th birthday and born just
before my 46th. I had so many fears about my own ability to cope
with a baby, mostly fuelled by the asked, and unasked questions of everyone
else.
"How will you manage the broken sleep at
your age?" (Actually it was good training for the insomnia of menopause.)
"Won’t he miss out on doing stuff with you
because you’re so old?" (So far we’ve walked the length and breadth of New York
and London, cycled around Uluru and Paris and climbed the Old Man of Storr and the Sydney Harbour Bridge together. I think I’m doing OK ;-)
"What if people think you’re his
grandmother?" (This hasn’t happened yet but I’ve since discovered that there’s
nothing wrong with being a grandma!)
"How will you cope with a teenager when
you’re 60?" (I’ll get back to you on this one).
"Aren’t you sad that you probably won’t see
his grandchildren?" (Yes, I was actually asked this question and yes, I am. But
my parents didn’t see their grandchildren either and they were in their 20s
when I was born).
As a result of these questions, I spent a
lot of Taine’s childhood willing him to grow up while I was still here to
protect him. Now I regret my own foolishness at wishing that magical time away.
Those long nights when nothing would calm him but a cuddle in our bed, the
early mornings when he just wanted to get up and play, the endless questions of
‘why, Mummy?’
Because now, suddenly, here he is, an
(almost) self sufficient adolescent and from my past experience I know how quickly the next few
years will pass. When I blink a few more times he’ll be finished school and
gone from home. My wonderful, extended twilight of hands on parenting will be
over. Today, as I watch the last vestiges of ‘twelvie’ disappear, I have to
remind myself that it’s ok to miss the little boy that he was but more
important to celebrate the man he is becoming.
Happy Birthday Insano
(And just to test his resilience, here's a video of Taine's theory of the world from many years ago)
