The growing tension

For mothers, there is always a tension in reconciling the boy we have known and the man we see. For years, I struggled to understand as I saw my mother-in-law’s eyes take in my husband, yet somehow fail to understand that he was an adult, married, with children. Now, I get it: my mind says, “Mathaus,” and I imagine a mop of wavy strawberry-blonde hair, wire rimmed glasses, and a Peter Pan costume. But here, now, in 2014, “Mathaus” should mean a black hoodie, a light mustache, and six-foot-something of blue-eyed teenager.

See the disconnect?

I’m guessing I’ll always struggle with this: my boys turned men, my girls turned women. Right now, especially, my eyes keep turning to my eldest son and being shocked at what they see. Because my boy? My little moppet? The one who once clung to my legs and refused to wade into a kiddie pool swirling with six inches of water? He’s growing up.

Mathaus is a foot taller than most adult men here. But it’s not just his height. It’s his presence. His confidence. His ability to part a sea of humanity without appearing flustered. His level-headedness. His calm approach to most situations. His winsome speech.

He fits here, in a way I admit I don’t understand. Asia has blossomed his manhood and brought him, hurtling, past the awkwardness of his early teens and into the fullness of being a young man. In six weeks, he has matured four years.

I am (mostly) thrilled with what I see. I don’t hesitate to send him to the chowk (junction) for vegetables, or toilet paper, or a taxi. I look forward to our discussions about anything and everything. I trust him to watch over his older sister and youngest siblings with the cautious eye he has always trained on them. Because that is another of Mathaus’ strengths: he is always wary, always on alert, always ready to protect. Someday, his wife will sleep well at night knowing that he guards her life with his own.

We have several years yet when I will wake up to Mathaus at my breakfast table, but I know that the balance of that time shifted into another basket a few miles back. Before I know it, he will be calling me from wherever he has landed, and sending me wry emails in French scolding me for my own lame attempts at the language. I will rarely feel his arms circle around me, or catch his scent as we work together, back to back, in a tight kitchen. He will have flown.

Which is what I want, and what I fear, all at once.

I have no illusions that any of my children, least of all my brilliant, independent chameleon of a first-born son, will settle anywhere nearby. I do not expect them home for every holiday, or sitting around my barbecue every other weekend of the long summer months. So I take what I can here, and now. But it’s flying by so, so quickly. It slips through hands that I must keep open, lest I strangle the tender necks of spirits born to fly.

So this, I am finding, is the most tenuous balance of parenting: seeing what we have known, and still allowing what is to be. A delicate thing. But a needful one.