My eldest son is leaving.

In a way, this started when he was one-and-a-half (sniff, I remember it like it was yesterday!) and I watched him toddle out of my orbit. “Ha, he’ll be back” I told myself, having read in a book that toddlers NEVER stray too far from the laps of their Mummies. Five minutes later, I was chasing after a disappearing dot. Naturally, when he noticed me coming after him, he ran faster. I could catch him, though! Later, happy that I would join him in his running-away game and exhausted by his brief independence, he slept on my lap.

Toddlers do that. They know, in their wisdom, that one day they will really leave us. So they give us a taste of the empty lap, and wean us gradually.

It is so gradual that I barely noticed it, but now I could not catch my son if I tried. I can only enjoy his company when I have it, and wonder what he’s up to the rest of the time. We’re both early birds, and potter about in the morning while the rest of the family is asleep. He makes breakfast sometimes, enough for everyone, leaving bacon and scrambled eggs in the pan for his brothers. He leaves for school with a wave, remembers his rugby kit, forgets his phone. I text him and hear a *beep* from his bedside table.

It strikes me that I am no longer raising my son: it is too late, now, for me to decide that I should read a certain ‘good’ book to him or teach him to catch a ball. He knows what he wants to read and do, and just quietly goes and does it. He will pop out and buy a chocolate bar, a game, a model, some balsa wood… What is there to stop him buying cigarettes? Alcohol? It would be easy, lots of kids do it.

He goes on his bike, and is allowed to stay out till evening. I have to avoid thinking of road accidents and weirdos. When he comes in, sweaty and starving, I pretend that I wasn’t worried and ask open-ended questions about school, the skate park, his buddies. Luckily, he loves to talk.

Adolescence is a scary time for parents. We remember what it was like, and can only let our kids go with the hope that everything we’ve said and done for the past thirteen years have been The Right Things. We can be grateful for our families, our friends, our neighbourhood, our teachers, who have helped to raise our kids. We can nag, a little, but the seeds of the adolescent personality were sowed years earlier. The baby I massaged now gives a great shoulder-rub. The small boy who learned poetry by heart because it was funny now has a stash of witty comebacks. The kid who was encouraged to keep strange pets (insects, spiders, caterpillars) now has a passion for science. The messy young chef who spilled raw eggs disastrously between the stove and counter-top now makes a wicked omelette.

I am so proud of him. When he does a kind deed, or excels in something, or just sits there… My heart swells with pride. This handsome, smart, likeable young man is MY son!

I nag: Wash your hair, pick up those socks! I ask, encourage and listen. I cook mountains of Teen Food for Growing Boys, and watch it disappear. I stop what I’m doing and take advantage of every opportunity to raise my sons, because soon they will be all grown up and they won’t need me in that way. They will THINK, for a time, that they don’t need me at all… but we all know how that will pan out. We’ve all got mothers, after all. And I still need mine!

by Nan Sheppard

Photo graciously provided by andy_c, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved