The Son, the Moon, and the beginning of the End

Crazy teen

This is the pic of my son, taken by one of his class mates, after he got his mohawk.

Bawk, bawk, bawk, baaaaaaaaaaaaaaawk. Chicken! The boys completely Barbied out and decided not to do the mohawks. Hair is just too important when you are 14.

The reality is that all the girls just about had a cow when he told them he was shaving the “Golden Locks” so he had to please his adoring fans by leaving all the flips and curls intact. His hair has celebrity status at school, and by golly, hair like that must persevere on to high school.

Yes, I have my hands full with this one. He is a complete and wonderful riot, and our relationship is one of the joys of my life…….most days. Some days, the teen ego has me wanting to scream. And I do. Then I regret it and we move on…………..because that is what it is all about. Imperfection. He and I are imperfect, and together we muddle through and make it joyful.

My teenager makes me proud. When he is grown, and I look back at his teen years, I won’t remember the battle of wills. I will not write about them here. They are trivial and unimportant and I will not talk about someone I love in a negative way for all the Internet to absorb. It is never right to do that, no matter how it is sugar coated. His life is not mine to plaster here for his friends to find and read about. I won’t do that to any of my children. This is not my personal diary to rag about my kids, and I will not treat it as such.

The teen I will remember is the one standing in the kitchen making smoothies for himself and his siblings. I will remember his sister leaning on his legs at Vacation Bible school and his arms wrapped protectively around her. I will remember how he looks me straight in the eye when he speaks to me.

I will smile and remember the day he announced that he was going to call me “Jody” from now on. When I laughed and protested, he smiled that incredible smile and said “Woman, that’s your name!”

He is unbelievably smart, funny, handsome beyond words, kind, strong willed, egocentric, selfless, selfish, generous, brutally honest, secretive, wide open, and a maze of personality and spunk that will take a lifetime to wade through and learn about.

He is my first born son. He is my blue eyed son.

He is nearing adulthood, and I find myself knowing that it is time….time to allow him the privacy that he deserves.  The privacy that my children deserve.  I am not sure where to go from here with this blog.  Some days I just can’t wait to get on and post about our day and share it with you….but I never do.  The reality is that most days, I want to hold my memories close to my heart and savor them all to myself.

Even though I don’t post as frequently, life goes on here, same as it always has.  Lots of love, surf, sand, and sailing.  Billy and I are as we have always been…happy, healthy and in love.  We will celebrate 19 years of marriage soon.  For our anniversary, we are planning to take the kids on a route that we traveled together for our honeymoon.  It will take us through the mountains and the desert, sleeping in a tent for almost 2 weeks.  When I asked Billy to tell me a word to describe what he thinks the trip will be like, he replied slowly and carefully “Challenging”. 

I will be taking my camera to capture the challenge.  I will photograph the look on their faces when they see the mountains.  The joy of bathing in a cold, mountain stream.  Making espresso over an open fire.  All of us, sardined together into a tent.  My children sitting under the same sand stone arch that their parents sat under 19 years ago looking at the moon.

I can’t wait to photograph the amazing red rock of Utah. God lives there, I do believe. It is the most majestic place, so it must be His earthly home. I know my pictures will never do it justice.

My guess is as good as yours if I will post them here. The time may have come to move on. Yes, I do believe, it just might have.

I suppose we will just have to wait and see.