And the Boy Turns into a Man

The Boston Herald

In his baby book there are pictures of my son sitting on his father's lap, a "before" picture in which soft, white curls frame his baby face and an "after" picture in which the baby face is the same and only the curls are missing.

I cried the day that picture was taken. The hair cut was a big step, the loss of baby curls proof that my son was no longer a baby. He was 20 months old, a toddler, admittedly new at toddling but making his way, as short a distance as it was, without me.

"He has to grow up," my husband said. I was six months pregnant and would soon have another baby to hold. But it wasn't another baby I wanted. I wanted my son small and needing me forever.

Oh, how I bucked at his growing. For every step he took forward, there I was wishing him back. That I didn't pull, that I didn't tie him down with orders and demands was only because of my husband.

"He's too young to wait for the bus alone," I would reason. "Someone could kidnap him. He could get hurt.”

"No one is going to kidnap him. Let him go," my husband would insist.

"He's too young to cross the street.”

"He has to learn sometime."

"He should be wearing a coat.”

"When he's cold, he'll put one on.”

And so it went. My son grew into a boy, into a teenager and my husband not only accepted but seemed to take joy in the growth while I moped around humming "Sunrise, Sunset.” I wasn't woeful all of the time. Special events triggered the old, "Get out the baby book and feel sad" routine. Every Christmas when the new pictures with Santa were taped next to the old pictures with Santa in which my son was, of course, younger, I would groan about time passing too quickly and how I missed those days, not realizing that I was wishing away the very days I  would  be longing for in coming years. Birthdays were the worst. Birthdays were always an "I can't believe he's already 10, 13, 16.”

Yesterday my son turned 19 and the funny thing is, I didn't mind at all. I reached for his baby book and looked at all the old, familiar pictures and reread for the hundredth time that Tom Jones and Glenn Campbell were the most popular entertainers and that "The Age of Aquarius" was the most popular song when he was born. And I studied all the holiday cards he made and signed,  "FROM YOUR SON, ROBERT" and glanced at his report cards and a poem he wrote in the second grade, "My Penis," which he fortunately never passed in. And I smiled at a picture of him at baseball camp in his Mike Andrews shirt and hat, then held in my hand, still wrapped in cellophane, the lock of hair I saved from that day when the thought of his growing up all but broke my heart.

Now he is grown and my heart isn't broken at all, only bigger somehow, full of pictures, not in the baby book, but memorized and stored forever in the same place I have stored pictures of all my children and of all of the people I have loved. 

Do I miss my small son? Of course I do. I miss the child who needed me and cried for me. But as much as I miss the boy he was, I love who he has become. He may not need me as much and he doesn't cry for me anymore, but on holidays when he comes home from school all grown and tall and handsome, I am full of the same kind of wonder I felt when looking into his crib.

How did I get so lucky? What did I do to deserve such joy?

I wasted tears fretting about his growing up. Child or man, love endures.