It seems like just yesterday I was holding my baby boy in my arms. It seems like just yesterday, he was new and we were the only ones awake in the wee hours of the morning and my sleep deprived mind was wandering all sorts of places while I tried to get him back to sleep and I somehow realized that in the year 2014, Alex's birthdate would be 12-13-14...and he would be 15!! And today was it!!
15! It hardly seems possible. I have often said that Alex has been my most challenging child to raise. Every child has it's challenges, but I got through the raising of the girls, pretty much unscathed. They are girls, I was a girl...I get where they are coming from, the things that they like, what makes them tick. But this boy that I was given....was just absolutely alien to me...his whole way of looking at life, his activity level, his way of thinking...the attitudes and choices that he made...all of it has been absolutely foreign to me.
Alex hasn't been what some would call the typical "boy"...not a big sports fan, he loved technology and sci-fi/fantasy at an early age. He loved to build things and if I had a penny for every lego piece I have stepped on in his life, I would be a rich woman, indeed.
He's been high-strung, yet funny and perceptive with an amazing vocabulary...yet doing well in school has rarely been the priority. He has given me more than a few anxious moments...
But at 15, I see signs of maturity....of responsibility. I see him taking things seriously, I listen to the things he is interested in, his plans for the future, the issues that concern him. I watch him interacting with others. He is a little socially awkward, but what kid isn't these days....he's smart, perceptive, intuitive, witty...and he is still a monster in the morning, and he still procrastinates and he still has attitudes at precisely the wrong moment...but he's getting there. Little by little I see him trying things and stepping outside of his comfort level and growing....and there it is......a light at the end of the tunnel.
And as that light grows brighter, so will the reality that he will be growing up and moving on with his own life...my baby. So for now, I'll enjoy him being 15 and being too funny for his own good, and computer crazed. I'll enjoy the activities he becomes involved with, and the people that are part of his life....and I'll enjoy all the amazing things about him....and continue to help him work on those rough edges...and I'll love him so much....and I'll be amazingly proud...although there will be days I will have to remind myself of these feelings. But I won't wish it away....because all too soon....he'll be all grown up.
“Growing up is hard, love. Otherwise everyone would do it.”
~ Kim Harrison
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