Suspended In Mid Air

This is one of my favorite photos of my youngest son, for several reasons. I love the way it captures a carefree summer afternoon in our leafy backyard. Then there's the goofy pose my little guy is in, all lanky limbs akimbo. And there's something about the way the camera captures him suspended in midair, just before he takes his plunge into the cool, refreshing, aquamarine water.

The shot was taken more than two years ago. We were having fun experimenting with the "sport" setting on our new digital camera. My son was eight here, right near the end of that time when I could still safely get away with calling him "my little guy."

And just this past summer, I somehow got away with using this photo on the front of an invitation I made for a pool party he had for his friends.

Knowing how much he likes to avoid appearing "babyish" at any cost, I was actually pretty surprised I got away with it. He did protest when he first saw it, but only slightly. I convinced him that his friends would think it was pretty neat, that they wouldn't find it babyish at all.

But I also have a 15-year-old son. So I know full well that this is probably one of the last times I'll get away with something like that with my 10-year-old. I know that any day now, he could transform.

He's already showing signs of it.

One night after I'd pulled the covers up over him and bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek, all of a sudden he laid this one on me: he said he didn't need me to tuck him in anymore. He even pulled out the dreaded, "None of my friends' moms tuck them in anymore." It felt like a punch to the gut hearing my youngest say that, knowing that--after 23 years of raising kids--my days of "tucking in" are numbered. But I quietly absorbed the blow and jokingly persisted, because I could sense that he wasn't really quite ready to let go of our lifelong tradition. Just testing the waters.

My hunch was fortunately correct. As of this writing, I'm still allowed to tuck him in and get my goodnight kiss. But I know it won't be long now before he decides he really means it.

It happened this way with his older brother. This is the age when I first began noticing the little signs that he was preparing to "break away."

You spend years hoping they'll learn to pick up their Legos and put them away. Then when they finally do it, it's for good. And then you long for the days when there were piles and bins of them everywhere. You wish you were still stepping on them in every room of the house, that the vacuum was still sucking them up with that loud, telltale rattling sound.

And the bookshelves tell the story of their growing up too. The hardcover Dr. Seuss books that you spent hours reading together when your sons were toddlers and young boys give way to hardcover Harry Potters. The multitudes of thin Clifford, Franklin, and Berenstain Bears paperbacks--books you were always happy to read with them because they were just the perfect length for a quick pre-nap read--get replaced by longer chapter books about Lego Bionicle characters, or Pokemon or Sponge Bob. Then it's on to Goosebumps, then Artemis Fowl, and before you know it, he's graduated to those Japanese manga paperbacks. At first you protest that there's too much violence in those stories, that they're "graphic" in more ways than one. And then before you know it, your "little boy" is at the point where you think he might be mature enough to handle certain morally centered R-rated movies if he watches them "accompanied by a parent."

(All too soon, my boys will be sailing off on their own adventures.)

We read the first five Harry Potter novels together, spending literally years-worth of memorable evenings tucked in on the couch together, me reading aloud to him chapter by chapter. Then finally the time came when he told me he'd like to make the journey to Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts by himself. And that's when I knew our nights of bedtime stories were officially over. Now he sits at the kitchen counter before bed most nights, munching on multiple bowls of cereal while reading Ray Bradbury or Stephen King stories to himself.

You can mark the passages of their young lives by their sleeping arrangements too. In those early months of their infancy, all of my boys slept nestled in right beside me, as safe and warm and protected as they could possibly be. Then when they'd lost a bit of that newborn fragility, when they'd grown bigger and stronger and could sleep through the night, we found ourselves moving them to their crib in our bedroom. It was just a few feet away, but it felt like a big separation nonetheless.

Finally when they got to be toddlers of two or so, it was time for them to make the move out of their crib and our room into a room of their own. Here they had their own real bed for the first time. But they were still reassuringly close by, right across the hall, where I could check on their breathing if they had colds, or pop in easily to make sure they were all covered up and cozy before I retired for the night.

And now that 15-year-old has recently moved out of the room he shared with his younger brother for the past eight years. He's made his biggest separation yet from the family proper. He's taken over the space downstairs that used to be our family office/computer room. So now he's got that quintessential teenager's "room in the basement," as far away from the rest of us as he can be without actually moving away.

He would've been scared to death to sleep all alone in the basement until a few years ago. But now...he loves it! He and his friend have spent many hours painting the walls, arranging furniture, assembling the new nightstand we bought him, digging up little objects d'art that we'd packed away in boxes, setting them up on his shelf and dresser. And he's wanted very little help from us in this undertaking. He's made it quite clear that he can do it on his own.

And in many ways, I'm loving it too, this surge toward adulthood and independence. It's a beautiful thing watching a small boy transform into a big boy, then into a pre-teen, and finally into a full-fledged teenager, a young man.

But I'm going to enjoy every minute I can with my last "little guy" before he grows up on me too.