The Boy is Growing Up

Well, as time marches on for all of us. Just as wrinkles, I mean laugh lines, are forming around my eyes and mouth, Monster is growing and changing as well. Tonight, he pointed to his mouth and said "tooth". I think his first tooth is loose.

Now for most parents, this is a time of joy and nostalgia. Their baby is growing up. Somewhere, I'm sure I feel that as well. But the overwhelming feeling I have is panic and fear. Panic that he's going to freak out, fear that he's going to regress as he attempts to absorb a new change within his body; yet something else that becomes out of his control. It's possible that I'm just over-reacting. I'm prone to that, I know. I'm constantly on the look out for the next trauma, the next stumbling block, the next unexpected, overwhelming occurrence that can send him back into himself.

Which is the greatest fear of us all. We spent so long looking at this beautiful, charming little creature live within his own little world. We were spectators, the audience watching a performance spoken in another language, missing the joke, not being able to read the subtitles. Then, slowly, bit by bit, we learned the language. Not fluent enough to get the joke, but enough to be able to anticipate what's next in the plot. Some of us stop here, having to learn to speak their language, to watch the performance.

But some of us, some very fortunate blessed us, are invited into the performance. We get the joke.

And sometimes the performance bleeds out into our world. He steps off that stage and into the audience. Not only do we get the joke, but he gets our jokes. This can happen all of a sudden, or so I've read elsewhere. For Monster, it was more gradual. A series of brief, tentative forays off that stage and into the audience. Maybe a word here, or a phrase there, but nothing fluid, not at first. His visitations in this world became longer and longer, his retreats back into his shorter and shorter, until he decided, one day for whatever reason, to move here. Into our world.

Like many who leave a world that is comfortable and familiar, he still visits that other place in his head, especially when this world is too hard, too confusing, too uncomfortable. And each time he leaves us, the panic sets in. The fear that it is actually our world that is the vacation house, that his permanent residence is in that other place, the comfortable place in his head.

And so, with this natural, normal progression of his development, this sign that he is slowly leaving childhood behind-just a first step down the road to adulthood, and a minor meaningless one at that-I worry, I panic.

So often, in the past year or so, my worry may be proven unfounded. He continually astounds and surprises me with his abilities to cope (which I swear are better than my own, truth be told). I hope this is one of those cases.

My baby is growing up. I hope I can survive it.