About a Boy

I've been thinking a lot about time today. My Outlook calendar is jam-packed. I'm working on editing the Fall 2007 list, on developing the Spring 2008 list, on acquiring the Spring 2009 list. I pick up the phone today to encourage all the authors on the Spring 2007 list as they head into their promotion season. All four of my family are traveling to different parts of the country, separately. My husband to Vegas today for a conference, my daughter to Tennessee Saturday for a race, my son to south Texas in a few weeks to visit my parents. Our bills lay stacked on the dining room table, ordered by due dates. Time is running the show here. Time dictates. Time never stops.

But I spent the evening with my son, who celebrates his thirteenth birthday tomorrow. We finally drive to Barnes and Noble/Roseville so he can spend his Christmas gift card. He waited a long time on this one. By the time I walked over to the Young Adult shelves he had six paperbacks in his arms and beckoned to the hardcover for the final Book Seven of the series, PenDragon, by D. J. McHale. He had the money to cover all of them but the hardcover so I told him it would be an extra birthday present just from me. He bought me a coffee and himself a hot chocolate and we read at the tables awhile. I could see him smile to himself as he read to page 5, page 12, and then he looked up at me and said, "I'm already on page 63."

He's been reading as long as he can remember. He learned to read early, with the help of his Sri Lankan caregivers, so that when he read along the lines he would say, "The bucket eez in the feeshing boat. I weeel help heem get it." Here's a picture I took while hiding behind a tree one summer morning while camping. My son had just crawled out of the tent, barechested and bushy-haired, and slipped right into a chair with his book.

Tonight I scrolled through our digital pictures, which only go back as far as three or four years ago. Time hasn't changed much but, measured by the life of a boy, I see expressions and postures I haven't seen awhile. He is turning thirteen and all the American teenage ways are upon him. He has braces, pimples, and greasy hair. He tells me things about a political hip-hop song, "I mean, excuse the language in this CD, but the swear words are used for good, not bad." He tells me there are some things he'll never tell me, and I thank him for letting me know that. He is more a loner now than he ever has been.


For a good five or six years he was best friends with a neighbor boy and they were nearly inseparable. Once my son came running in, grabbed some Pop Tarts and told me if I needed him he and that best friend would be in Fort 59. For over a year they had created forts round the block. The demarcations might be as simple as a slight hole dug and filled with oak leaves; another spot they left long sticks used as swords.

Once, at 7, he asked me if God was a man or a woman. I told him I was no theologian but that I thought God was us. And that I felt that in each one of us was the image of a man AND a woman, that we had a little of both in us. So I couldn't really say about God, except that God reflected us. He thought for a long time and just as I was about to walk away, he said, "Mom, I know you believe what you say, but don't ever tell me I have even a bit of girl inside of me ever again." My son, then, the he-man.

Here are pictures from the time Papa taught them target shooting up at the lake place.

There is a closeness there that makes me swoon; I remember the two of them hanging upside down--shirtless--for hours on our backyard monkey bars. And then I remember their big fight, when they felt they had little in common anymore--his friend's mother, a million-dollar earner as partner on the big tobacco case in town. Many new things were consumed by that now-wealthier family. My son had little tolerance anymore and little sentiment for the physical bonds they had once shared. And already I am jumping ahead to my son at twenty, at thirty, as a man, not a boy.

Today we talked about what it's like to be in a room with people who are older than him, or more talented. He tells me he just stays along the side and doesn't say much; he says he likes watching and learning from people he thinks are stronger than him. When we walked to the store last week, we talked about the elderly in our neighborhood and their fixed incomes. He told me all about what he had learned of Europe's aging population and that their pensions were, he begged pardon, "screwed." I hide my surprise at his maturity until after he's gone along his way.

He and I are at pivotal ages. I see him and at once I look back at all that has formed him and ahead to all that he will be. His life seems to take charge of time for me and not the other way around. I am grateful for that.