Growing Up With My Thirteen Year-Old Son

The conversation starts out innocuously enough.  Playful banter actually.  I am complaining, which I hardly ever do, about the puppies to Quince and Alexander.  I joke, “Don’t think when you grow up and leave this house, the dogs are staying with me.  Each of you will take one with you. And then we’ll work out a joint custody arrangement where you switch every week.”  Alexander jumps in, “Oh shame, they’ll have to go back and forth from a huge house to a shack.”  We joke about who will be living in the shack and who owns the huge house. 

Then Morals Mommy  can’t help herself, can’t stay with the lightness, can’t resist the opportunity to do a little values teaching.  “Now, guys, you know it isn’t money that really makes you happy.  It will be feeling like you are contributing to making the world better.”   And barely into teenhood Alexander can’t resist the pushback.  “Why do I have to help the world?  I just wanna make myself happy.  What has the world ever done for me?”   WHAT?!!  Are you kidding me??!!   Blam, he’s hooked me, like a fish on his line.    My blood pressure rockets.

 Fortunately, before I can retort with indignation at his ignorance and entitlement, Quince oblivious to the shift in mood, says, “I am going to be an artist.”  Alexander, smelling that he has drawn blood, smirks and says disdainfully, “And how does that contribute to making the world a better place?”  My cue.   I launch in. Only I don’t remember what I said, because I had barely begun my impassioned tirade about the all important role of art in a healthy civilization, when Alexander stops me in my tracks.  Looking straight at me he goes for the kill, “Mommy, when I look at art. . . it makes me want to vomit.”

I am absolutely speechless with fury. So I employ the most grown-up of strategies when you disagree with someone.  I turn and walk out of the room.  

Although in general I don’t want to teach my children to walk out when things get heated – in fact, I’m very invested in learning with them how to stay in the fire – in this case, it probably was the best thing.   Upstairs, as my blood pressure lowers and  I replay the conversation, I begin to understand it as the work of a 13 year-old boy needing to separate from his mommy, a boy on the path to develop his own identity.  Apparently, this process necessitates spitting big teenage lougies on all I hold near and dear. 

Eish.   I am not, AT ALL, a praying person.  But some things require unusual measures.  Universe, going forward, please give me the strength to not bite when my bright boy casts out that line, barbed hook on the end, begging me to chomp.   Let it drop down harmlessly while I maintain the smiling, peaceful air of the Buddha.